The
Ertebølle culture (ca 5300 BC – 3950 BC) is the name of a
hunter-gatherer and fisher, pottery-making
culture dating to the end of the
Mesolithic period. The culture was concentrated in Southern Scandinavia, but genetically linked to strongly related cultures in Northern Germany and the Northern Netherlands. It is named after the type site, a location in the small village of Ertebølle on
Limfjorden in
Danish Jutland. In the 1890s, the
National Museum of Denmark excavated heaps of
oyster shells there, mixed with
mussels,
snails, bones and bone, antler and flint artifacts, which were evaluated as
kitchen middens (Danish
køkkenmødding), or refuse dumps. Accordingly, the culture is less commonly named the
Kitchen Midden. As it is approximately identical to the Ellerbek culture of
Schleswig-Holstein, the combined name,
Ertebølle-Ellerbek is often used. The Ellerbek culture (German
Ellerbek Kultur) is named after a type site in Ellerbek, a community on the edge of
Kiel,
Germany.