Basalt adze of the Linear Pottery culture
Azuela de basalto de la cultura de la cerámica lineal
- Date
- c. 5100 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Kückhoven, Erkelenz, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
- Credited to
- Linear Pottery culture (LBK)
- Field
- Tools
What it is
A polished-stone woodworking tool with the edge set across the haft, cutting wood like an adze and used for felling, squaring and hollowing. The first farmers of central Europe used it to build longhouses and oak-lined wells, such as the one at Kückhoven.
Dendrochronology of the Kückhoven well timbers places its construction around 5090 BC (Tegel et al. 2012). The polished stone adze is older elsewhere; it is included here as the best-dated carpentry tool of early farming in central Europe.
What it led to
- timber longhouses of Europe's first farming villages
- oak-framed wells, among the oldest surviving woodwork
- spread of Neolithic carpentry, dated by the tree rings of its timbers