The Netherlands are internationally renowned for the archaeology of its
wetland environments. The reclamation of the Flevoland Polders in the
early half of the 20th century not only exposed hundreds of shipwrecks,
but also remnants of prehistoric landscapes and traces of human
occupation dating to Mesolithic and Neolithic times. Ultimately, this
led to the 'discovery' of the Swifterbant Culture in the 1960s-1970s,
and which was initially seen as a Dutch equivalent of the Ertebølle
Culture.
Archaeological investigations conducted by the University of Groningen,
and later also the University of Amsterdam, delivered important new data
on the nature of the Swifterbant Culture. It became key in the
discussion about the adoption of crop cultivation and animal husbandry
by hunter-gatherers living in wetland environments. Also, the
Swifterbant Culture became central in the debate on the meaning of
archaeologically defined 'cultures', questioning relationships between
social interaction and material culture. With the increase of
urbanization and infrastructural works, alongside changes in the Dutch
Monuments Act, dozens of small and large-scale development-led
investigations got initiated at the turn of the century.
One project involved the construction of the Hanzelijn railway, crossing
one of the polders from West to East. Archaeologists became aware that
much of what was known - and unknown - about the prehistoric past of the
Flevoland Polders, was not easily accessible. It was therefore decided
to bring together, as much as possible, all the information from the
many scattered sources, and make it accessible to professionals, both
inside and outside the Netherlands. The result is this book, which
presents an overview of the most important sites and data, and what
these learn us about the nature of the archaeological record, landscape
change, prehistoric subsistence, ritual behavior, as well as
socio-cultural developments during the Mesolithic and Neolithic.
Previously considered an impossibility, 'fossilized' fields, discovered
at Swifterbant, demonstrate crop cultivation in wetland environments in
an early stage of the Neolithic. In fact, the prehistory of the
Flevoland Polders is tightly connected to the dynamic nature of the
extended wetlands that characterized the landscape since the end of the
last glacial. Although often regarded as the 'margin' of cultural
dynamics in the past, we can now see that the Flevoland Polders were
right in the center of fundamental long-term changes in human existence
in NW Europe.
