Archeologisch Museum Stein

Archaeological Museum Stein: time travel from the Linear Ceramics; 6,000 years of special burial!

In 2017, the Archeological Museum Stein was completely renovated. From August 2017, as the Stein Archaeological Museum, it will pay attention to the many and varied ways in which people have dealt with death and burial over the centuries.

These topics are illustrated with archaeological objects found in graves from different periods. Most come from Stein and the surrounding area. Many of them were collected at the beginning of the last century by Dr Beckers and Father Munsters and others were donated to the museum by employees and private individuals.

The core of the exhibition is a tomb that was built around 3400 BC and was discovered in 1963 during excavations. The floor of the tomb was made of large boulders from the Meuse. On that floor lay the burnt bones of the dead of the farming community that lived here. Who the people of this 'Stein group' were is still the subject of research.

They were a small part of a cultural phenomenon of the time that spanned large parts of southwestern, western and northwestern Europe. It was the time when people built tombs and other monuments of large stones. But nowhere else has a grave like Stein's been found, neither in the Netherlands nor abroad.

In addition, burial inventories can be seen from an older phase of the New Stone Age, from the late Bronze Age, early Iron Age, the Roman period, the Merovingian period and the early Middle Ages. All these graves and burials have their own special character. They are explained in the exhibition by means of films and information panels.