Stein Archaeological Museum

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

In 2017, the Stein Archaeological Museum was completely renovated. As Archaeological Museum Stein, from August 2017 onwards, it pays attention to the many and varied ways in which people deal with death and burial over the centuries.

These topics are illustrated with archaeological objects found in tombs from different periods. Most of them come from Stein and the surrounding area. Many of them were collected at the beginning of the last century by Doctor 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 during excavations in 1963. 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 encompassed large parts of Southwest, Western and Northwestern Europe. It was the time when people built tombs and other monuments from large stones. But nowhere else has a grave like Stein's ever been found, not in the Netherlands and not abroad.

In addition, grave 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 the burials have their own special character. They are explained in the exhibition by means of films and information panels.

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