A new examination of a 7,000-year-old roe deer antler headdress from Eilsleben provides compelling evidence of contact between Central Europe’s last hunter-gatherers and its earliest farming communities.
The State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology (LDA) of Saxony-Anhalt has reanalysed material from the Neolithic settlement of Eilsleben-Vosswelle in the Börde district, a key site for understanding the transition from foraging to farming.
A recently published study focuses on an older discovery from the site: a worked roe deer antler interpreted as part of a headdress. Strikingly, its closest parallel is found not within Neolithic contexts, but in the much older Mesolithic grave of the so-called “shaman” from Bad Dürrenberg. This correspondence underscores the intensity of interaction between early farmers and the remaining hunter-gatherer groups.
The larger historical context starts around 9600 BC when the climate in Central Europe improved considerably after the last Ice Age, marking the onset of the Mesolithic period. Communities of this era continued the hunter-gatherer lifeways of the Palaeolithic, adapting to more forested landscapes.
In Central Germany, they hunted roe deer, red deer, European bison, and wild boar with bows, and fishing and the gathering of plant foods took ever more prominent places in subsistence.
The grave of the “shaman” from Bad Dürrenberg, dating to this period, is one of the most remarkable finds in Central European archaeology. Approximately 9,000 years ago, a woman aged between 30 and 40 was buried in an elaborate grave alongside a six-month-old infant. Grave goods, including a headdress made of deer antler and pendants fashioned from animal teeth, indicate her exceptional status as a spiritual leader within her community.
By the mid-6th millennium BC, the first farming populations—genetically descended from groups originating in Anatolia and the Aegean—had spread into Central Europe. Archaeologically identified as the Linear Pottery culture, these early farmers settled the fertile loess soils of Central Germany.
In the process, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were displaced northward into less fertile regions such as the outwash plains and inland dunes of the Altmark. Yet displacement did not preclude interaction. Evidence suggests that exchange between farmers and hunter-gatherers began soon after the newcomers’ arrival, although material traces of these contacts are rare.
The Eilsleben-Vosswelle settlement is of particular importance here. Situated on the northernmost edge of the loess zone, about 2.5 kilometres southeast of Eilsleben, on a gentle slope toward the Aller River, the site was discovered in the 1920s through surface finds.
Extensive investigations during 1974-1989, based on a series of trial excavations conducted in 1973, revealed a multi-phase settlement of the Linear Pottery culture. The site appears to have been fortified with a rampart, ditch, and fence—an unusual feature for early Linear Pottery settlements and likely related to its exposed position along a cultural frontier.
Evidence in Eilsleben suggests intensive contact with neighbouring hunter-gatherers. Stone and antler tools utilised in the settlement show clear affinities with Mesolithic production methods and forms.
The most notable is the worked roe deer antler headdress fragment, which closely resembles Mesolithic mask styles, including the one from Bad Dürrenberg. Taken together, these findings show that the boundary between early farmers and hunter-gatherers was not fixed but permeable, characterised by technological exchange and shared symbolic practices during this transformative period of European prehistory.
Sources : State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt
