Limensgård

In the books on Bornholm’s ancient monuments and antiquities (published in 1886 and 1897), E. Vedel mentioned the numerous finds of tools dating to the Stone Age that had been found on the island, and expressed the view that the abundant finds dating to this period from Bornholm were on a par with those from other parts of East Denmark. At the end of the 19th century, only a few coastal settlements were known of: Grønnebæk, Hammeren, and Frennemark. Vedel’s considerations in relation to how people lived in ‘the later part of the Stone Age’, however, went beyond what could be concluded from the remains and finds from these settlements. He regarded the large stone burials as evidence that the Stone Age people were determined builders, not only when it came to the construction of burial monuments, but also their own dwellings. N.F.B. Sehested’s experiments using flint tools had shown that these could have been effectively used in the construction of timber structures in the Neolithic period. But many years passed before archaeological excavations confirmed that during the Neolithic there was a house-building tradition that corresponded with Vedel’s ideas. In general, archaeologists’ knowledge of Neolithic settlement only developed slowly throughout the 20th century, and still remains incomplete. A step towards increasing this knowledge was taken with the excavation of the settlement at Limensgård, in the south of Bornholm, which is the subject of this book.

In the books on Bornholm’s ancient monuments and antiquities (published in 1886 and 1897), E. Vedel mentioned the numerous finds of tools dating to the Stone Age that had been found on the island, and expressed the view that the abundant finds dating to this period from Bornholm were on a par with those from other parts of East Denmark. At the end of the 19th century, only a few coastal settlements were known of: Grønnebæk, Hammeren, and Frennemark. Vedel’s considerations in relation to how people lived in ‘the later part of the Stone Age’, however, went beyond what could be concluded from the remains and finds from these settlements. He regarded the large stone burials as evidence that the Stone Age people were determined builders, not only when it came to the construction of burial monuments, but also their own dwellings. N.F.B. Sehested’s experiments using flint tools had shown that these could have been effectively used in the construction of timber structures in the Neolithic period. But many years passed before archaeological excavations confirmed that during the Neolithic there was a house-building tradition that corresponded with Vedel’s ideas. In general, archaeologists’ knowledge of Neolithic settlement only developed slowly throughout the 20th century, and still remains incomplete. A step towards increasing this knowledge was taken with the excavation of the settlement at Limensgård, in the south of Bornholm, which is the subject of this book.