In the 1960s and 1970s another closely related culture was found in the (now dry)
Noordoostpolder in the Netherlands, near the village Swifterbant and the former island of
Urk. Named the
Swifterbant culture (5300 – 3400 BC) they show a transition from hunter-gatherer to both animal husbandry, primarily cows and pigs, and cultivation of barley and emmer wheat.
[1] During the formative stages contact with nearby
Linear Pottery culturesettlements in
Limburg has been detected. Like the Ertebølle culture, they lived near open water, in this case creeks, riverdunes and bogs along post-glacial banks of the Overijsselse
Vecht. Recent excavations
[2] show a local continuity going back to (at least) 5600 BC, when burial practices resembled the contemporary gravefields in Denmark and South Sweden "in all details", suggesting only part of a diverse ancestral "Ertebølle"-like heritage was locally continued into the later (Middle Neolithic) Swifterbant tradition (4200 – 3400 BC).
The Ertebølle culture was roughly contemporaneous with the
Linear Pottery culture, food-producers whose northernmost border was located just to the south. The Ertebølle did not practice agriculture but it did utilize domestic grain in some capacity, which it must have obtained from the south.
The Ertebølle culture replaced the earlier
Kongemose culture of Denmark. It was limited to the north by the Scandinavian
Nøstvet and Lihult cultures. It is divided into an early phase ca 5300 BC-ca 4500 BC, and a later phase ca 4500 BC-3950 BC. Shortly after 4100 BC the Ertebølle began to expand along the
Baltic coast at least as far as
Rügen. Shortly thereafter it was replaced by the
Funnelbeaker culture.
In recent years archaeologists have found the acronym EBK most convenient, parallel to LBK for German Linearbandkeramik (
Linear Pottery culture) and TRB for German Trichterbecher, Danish Tragtbæger (
Funnelbeaker culture) and Dutch trechterbekercultuur. Ostensibly for Ertebølle Kultur, EBK could be either German or Danish and has the added advantage that Ellerbek also begins with E.