Village and kitchen midden

In the 1890s, Nationalmuseet excavated a kitchen midden here at Ertebølle. It can be dated back to the period 5200-4200 B.C., and it represents a Stone Age culture which can also be found in South Sweden, Schleswig-Holstein, and along the North German Baltic coast. The kitchen midden contains remains of for instance fish, oysters, wild boars, deer, elks, and aurochses. Thus, it throws light on the menu of the people of the Stone Age, and it also tells us that the people of the Stone Age both gathered food in the fjord and went hunting in the large woods.

International term

Probably the term køkkenmødding relates first and foremost to the many oyster shells from many years of oyster eating in the same place. It was a Dane, namely the zoologist Japetus Steenstrup, who invented the term, when he excavated some similar shell mounds in Djursland, and today it is an international term – and one of the few Danish words which have been included in foreign languages, for instance in French and Japanese!

The Stone Age Centre

The Stone Age Centre in Ertebølle tells about the nature of the place almost 7000 years ago – and about the people who lived here. For instance, there is a reconstructed village which shows what the huts of that time might look like, and how flint was turned into axes and other tools.