Exploring the Danish Neolithic

At Hull and East Riding Museum we have an array of stone tools from Denmark which all date to the Neolithic period (3900BC – 1700BC).  Not only are they gorgeous objects which are lovely to look at, they also show a variety of technological developments at a crucial point in human history.

Beautiful flint sickle from Denmark:
Hull and East Riding Museum

So let’s start with a little discussion of the Neolithic period or New Stone Age when people started to change their way of life. 

Before the Neolithic period, people had a ‘hunter-gatherer’ lifestyle.  Because their survival depended on hunting animals and collecting vegetation, nuts or berries they lived a nomadic existence – they moved from place to place creating temporary living places so that they could follow their food sources according to season and animal migration patterns.

The Neolithic is generally associated with a move away from the nomadic lifestyle.  People started to experiment with producing their own food and living in the same place for extended periods of time.  Archaeologists have come up with a few names for this, because everything needs a jazzy name, including The Agricultural Revolution and The Neolithic Revolution.

The move from nomadism to settled farming was possible due to a variety of innovations, both technological and agricultural which developed over a long period of time (we’re talking thousands of years).

I couldn't find a good image of Neolithic people being agricultural,
so instead enjoy this rural scene 'The Banks of Arrochar, Scotland'
by Alfred de Breanski (1852-1928): Ferens Art Gallery

On the agricultural development front, people started experimenting with growing their own crops and keeping animals for their meat and other products such as milk and leather (also known as animal husbandry).  Over time, plants and animals which were controlled by humans through farming started to diverge from their wild counterparts.  This is known as domestication.  It was the result of selection (either inadvertent or intentional).  For example, domesticated wheat grains are larger and their seeds remain attached to the rachis (stalk), meaning that there is more yield from a harvest.  Differences can be seen between domesticated and wild animals, for example pig tusks are smaller in size and they have different behavioural traits (being more docile and calm) which were selected for by farmers.

Agricultural developments  are all well and good, but they could not have happened without new technology.  This is reflected in our collection of stone tools from Denmark, showing not only essential technological developments but a movement towards increasingly specialised tools – where a tool was created to perform a particular task or function.

Arguably the most important innovation was polishing stone – this was a process done in the final stages of making a tool. 

A flint tool is created by knapping (hitting) the flint with another harder stone (known as a hammer stone), sharp flakes of flint come away from the surface and the flint knapper (person doing the hitting!) uses this method until the flint is the desired shape or tool.   This is how stone tools were made for hundreds of thousands of years.

Flint axehead, polished on the blade:
Hull and East Riding Museum

However, in the Neolithic people started polishing the surfaces of their tools.  To polish flint, you get a gritty stone (or possibly use sand with a leather cloth) and rub it backwards and forwards over the surface of the tool, grinding off the uneven surface until it is smooth.  It might not sound revolutionary – but it was! 

A polished axehead could cut down large trees because it wouldn’t get stuck in the trunk.  This meant that large areas of land could be cleared to create fields for growing crops.  It also meant the timber from land clearance could be used to create fences for the fields or pens for animals, as well as buildings such as houses.  Sounds pretty amazing now, doesn’t it!

Polished axehead:
Hull and East Riding Museum

Our collection of Danish flint tools also shows that once people in the Neolithic created this new technology – they couldn’t be stopped!  They created all sorts of tools from flint, such as sickles for harvesting crops as well as chisels and adzes for working wood.  If you look at the images of these tools, you’ll notice they are similar to the technology we use today – we just make them out of metal.

But how do these flint tools differ from British Neolithic stone tools?

Well, flint tools in Denmark are particularly characteristic because of their shape – they have very straight, flat sides and butts (the non-cutting edge at the back of the tool).  The other Danish ‘flavour’ we have within our collection are these gorgeous flint daggers which are unique to Denmark.  They often have a flat, elongated and pointed blade with a cuboid flint handle or tang.  Current research suggests these daggers were not functional, instead archaeologists think they were used to show their owner’s high social status.

Flint Dagger: Hull and East Riding Museum

Now you’ve found out a little more about our Danish Neolithic stone tools, you might be wondering how they ended up in Hull and East Riding Museum’s collections…and to find out, you’ll have to check out our next post!