The First Peopling of the Meuse Valley

The earliest remains of human habitation in the Netherlands were discovered in the early 1980s in the loess-covered Belvédère quarry near Maastricht on the Netherlands-Belgium border, by archeologists from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands led by Prof Wil Roebroeks. This earliest contextual evidence of habitation in the gravel sediments, deposited by the river Meuse, correlates with an early interstadial period during the Saale/Wolstonian Glacial Stage, dating to about 250,000 years ago (Oxygen Isotope Stage 7). The finds include flint objects and animal bones and one of the most spectacular finds is that of a flint knife from Site G that was used to butcher a woolly rhinoceros, which remains were also found near the site.

Large backed knife found between the remains of a young wooly rhino at Belvédère Site G (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden Leiden)

The remains of human stone tool industry discovered in Meuse deposits near Mons in Belgium, may even be slightly older than the findings at the Belvédère quarry. Handaxes from the late Saalian stage and other artifacts derived from ice-borne deposits have been recovered in the central and northern Netherlands and are characterized as late Acheulian.

Remains from a later Neanderthal encampment were also found in the Belvédère loess-gravel quarry (Site J), dating from the Early Weichselien/Devensian, about 80,000 years ago (IOS5). Other relicts from this Mousterian culture (about 80,000–35,000 ya) have been found just across the Belgian border, at Veldwezelt-Hezerwater. Other nearby open excavation sites include Colmont-Ponderosa near Heerlen, and several sites in the Netherlands’ province of North Brabant, in Belgian Limburg and in the Ardennes caves in southern Belgium.

Skeletal Neanderthal remains were also recovered nearby in the Belgian caves of Spy, near Namur, and Engis, near Liège, only 35 kilometers from the Belvédère quarry. These include the skull of a Neanderthal child, found in the Engis cave in 1829, 27 years before the discovery of the specimen from the Neander valley. However, it was not recognized as an early human fossil until decades later.

Skull and mandible fragments of the Engis Neanderthal child discovered in the Meuse valley, near Liège (Philippe-Charles Schmerling

In 2009 a fragment of a 40,000 year old Neanderthal skull was found in sand dredged from the North Sea floor off the coast of the province of Zeeland.

Meuse terraces

The gravel deposits from the Belvédère quarry are located in an old river bed of the river Meuse and it forms part of a sequence of as many as 31 terrace levels distinguished in the subsoil of the Meuse Valley. The youngest terrace is located close to the current river course, about forty meters above sea level, and the oldest terrace is around 220 meters above sea level. The height difference between successive terraces is about 5-10 meters.

In the creation of this terraced landscape three events played a major role:

1) During an ice age, the Meuse flowed through shallow braided beds spread over a broad river plain, depositing sand and gravel.

2) During the warmer interglacial periods that followed, the Meuse would cut deep into the river plain, creating a fixed course.

3) Meanwhile, the entire area was pushed up by tectonic movements in the earth's crust. The uplift of the Ardennes and Eifel region, during the Alpine orogeny, forced the course of the river to the west, creating its characteristic stepped terraces. This is why the youngest terraces (10,000 – 130,000 ya) are located close to the current river course and the higher and older terraces (700,000 – 1,000,000 ya) can be found further to the east.

The formation of the Meuse terraces (source: G eologie van Nederland).

The sequence of Meuse terraces reflect the succession of cold and warm periods during the last 2 million years. Because of the speed of the tectonic uplift of this area in the last 1 million years, every terrace represents an ice age, carving a unique geological calendar of the Late Pleistocene in the landscape of Zuid-Limburg. The terraces are not visible everywhere. Many are obscured by the fine grained loess deposits covering them, deposited by the wind during the last two glaciations (Saalien and Weichselien) and to some extend during the Younger Dryas, blown in from Doggerland in the North.

Lower and Early Middle Palaeolithic finds from Sweikhuizen

Although many remains from Lower and Middle Palaeolithic habitation are obscured by the (1-20 m) thick layer of loess, some sites that are exposed by erosion in sunken roads and 'graften' (terraced slopes resulting from traditional 'ridge and furrow' ploughing techniques), provide a unique window into the distant past.

Shown below are a few of the Lower Palaeolithic and Early Middle Palaeolithic surface finds from the middle terraces (St Pietersberg terrace) near the village of Sweikhuizen, famous for its Late Palaeolithic (Magdalenian) hunter-gatherer’s settlement. Many of these Lower Palaeolithic are produced from a locally available type of Upper Jurrassic Oxfordian chert that is abundant in the gravel deposits of the middle terraces and originates from the Vosges region in France.

Shown below is an asymmetrically shaped ficron handaxe from Sweikhuizen made from homogenous Vosges chert. It has a delicately worked tip, showing gloss patination resulting from use-wear. The handaxed is backed to improve grip and a large flake was removed to create a (right-handed) thumb-rest. The handaxe is covered with a honey coloured brown patina and has suffered from frost damage at the back and on the side, exposing the original grey colour of the chert.

Lower Palaeolithic ficron handaxe from Sweikhuizen

Lower Palaeolithic handaxe from Sweikhuizen

Although such surface finds are difficult to date there are several aspects that indicate this handaxe is of Lower Palaeolithic origin:

Firstly, the shape of this handaxe shows similarities with Acheulean ficron handaxes found in France and the Thames valley in Britain. Interestingly, it bears a striking resemblance with a similarly asymmetrical example from the Dordogne region in France.

Acheulean ficron handaxe from the Dordogne

Acheulean handaxe from St. Magne de Castillion (Handbook of Palaeolithic Typology, Debénath & Dibble, 1994)

Secondly, the handaxe has a honey coloured patina that is typical for river terrace gravels, indicating that the implement must have been left behind close to the course of the river. The age of formation of the river terrace on which Sweikhuizen is located (St Pietersberg terrace) has been estimated between 1 million and 800,000 years ago. Any human occupation on this river terrace must have occured during a warm period after the river Meuse moved to the west and started carving into the Tertiary sand deposits to form the lower terrace through which currently the Geleen beek runs. The formation of these westerly Rothem and Caberg terraces has been estimated around 700,000 - 500,000 and 500,000 – 250,000 years ago, respectively, which would make this handaxe at least as old as the implements found at Belvédère’s site G, if not older.

The sequence of Meuse terraces superimposed onto a relief map of Zuid-Limburg (Adapted from: Landschapsvisie Zuid Limburg, Kerkstra et al., 2007)

Thirdly, the Belvédère tools are made from a good quality type of flint. Although tools made from good quality flint can be found around the Sweikhuizen area, most of these tools are made from flint imported from mining sites such as Rijckholt, Valkenburg and Lousberg and date to a later era (Middle Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age). The above mentioned handaxe and the implements described below are made from locally found stone, which is typical for Lower and Early Middle Palaeolithic tool industries.

Other examples of Lower and Early Middle Palaeolithic finds for Sweikhuizen: