Geographical range Europe Period Neolithic Europe | Preceded by Linear Pottery culture | |
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Dates circa 5,000 B.C.E. — circa 4,900 B.C.E. Major sites Rhine-Main, Rhenish Hesse | ||
The Hinkelstein culture is a Neolithic archaeological culture situated in Rhine-Main and Rhenish Hesse, Germany. It is a Megalithic culture, part of the wider Linear Pottery horizon, dating to approximately the 50th to 49th century BC.
The culture's name is due to a suggestion of Karl Koehl of Worms (1900). Hinkelstein is the term for menhir in the local Hessian dialect, after a menhir discovered in 1866 in Monsheim. Hinkel is a Hessian term for "chicken"; the Standard German name for menhirs, Hünenstein "giants' stone", having sometimes been jokingly mutated into Hühnerstein "chicken-stone".
References
Hinkelstein culture Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA