Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Swifterbant | |
|---|---|
 Aerial view of Swifterbant | |
  Swifterbant Location of Swifterbant in the province of Flevoland | |
| Coordinates: 52°34′3″N 5°38′30″E / 52.56750°N 5.64167°E | |
| Country | Netherlands |
| Province | Flevoland |
| Municipality | Dronten |
| Population (2025)[1] | |
• Total | 6,477 |
| Time zone | UTC+1 (CET) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+2 (CEST) |
| Postcode | 8255 |
| Area code | 0321 |
Swifterbant (Dutch pronunciation: [ˌsʋɪftərˈbɑnt]) is a town in the Dutch province of Flevoland. It is a part of the municipality of Dronten, and lies about 13 km northeast of Lelystad.
As of 2025, Swifterbant had 6,477 inhabitants.[1] The built-up area of the town is 2.42 km2 (0.93 sq mi), and contains 2,460 residences.[2]
The town also gave its name to a Neolithic Swifterbant culture dated to between 5300 and 3400 BC, before the Roman Warm Period and follow-on Dunkirk transgressions.
Media related to Swifterbant at Wikimedia Commons| International | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
 | This Flevoland location article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Swifterbant (Dutch pronunciation: [ˌsʋɪftərˈbɑnt]) is a town in the Dutch province of Flevoland. It is a part of the municipality of Dronten, and lies about 13 km northeast of Lelystad. As of 2025, Swifterbant had 6,477 inhabitants. The built-up area of the town is 2.42 km2 (0.93 sq mi), and contains 2,460 residences.
The Swifterbant culture was a Subneolithic archaeological culture in the Netherlands, dated between 5300 BC and 3400 BC. Like the Ertebølle culture, the settlements were concentrated near water, in this case creeks, riverdunes and bogs along post-glacial banks of rivers like the Overijsselse Vecht. In the 1960s and 1970s, artifacts classified as "Swifterbant culture" were found in the (now dry) Flevopolder in the Netherlands, near the villages of Swifterbant and Dronten. Other sites were uncovered in South Holland (Bergschenhoek) and the Betuwe (Hardinxveld-Giessendam).
The Funnel(-neck-)beaker culture, in short FBC, TRB or TBK (German: Trichter(-rand-)becherkultur, Dutch: Trechterbekercultuur; Danish: Tragtbægerkultur; c. 4100–2800 BCE), was an archaeological culture in north-central Europe. It developed as a technological merger of local neolithic and mesolithic techno-complexes between the lower Elbe and middle Vistula rivers. These predecessors were the (Danubian) Lengyel-influenced Stroke-ornamented ware culture (STK) groups/Late Lengyel and Baden-Boleráz in the southeast, Rössen groups in the southwest and the Ertebølle-Ellerbek groups in the north. The TRB introduced farming and husbandry as major food sources to the pottery-using hunter-gatherers north of this line. The TRB techno-complex is divided into a northern group including Northern Germany and southern Scandinavia (TRB-N, roughly the area that previously belonged to the Ertebølle-Ellerbek complex), a western group in the Netherlands between the Zuiderzee and lower Elbe that originated in the Swifterbant culture, an eastern group centered on the Vistula catchment, roughly ranging from Oder to Bug, and south-central groups (TRB-MES, Altmark) around the middle and upper Elbe and Saale. Especially in the southern and eastern groups, local sequences of variants emerged. In the late 4th millennium BCE, the Globular Amphora culture (GAC) replaced most of the eastern and subsequently also the southern TRB groups, reducing the TRB area to modern northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. The younger TRB in these areas was superseded by the Single Grave culture (EGK) at about 2800 BCE. The north-central European megaliths were built primarily during the TRB era.
The Ertebølle culture (c. 5,400 BCE – 3,950 BCE) (Danish pronunciation: [ˈɛɐ̯təˌpølə]) is a hunter-gatherer and fisher, pottery-making culture dating to the end of the Mesolithic period. The culture was concentrated in Southern Scandinavia. It is named after the type site, a location in the small village of Ertebølle on Limfjorden in Danish Jutland. In the 1890s the National Museum of Denmark excavated heaps of oyster shells there, mixed with mussels, snails, bones, and artefacts of bone, antler, and flint, which were evaluated as kitchen middens (Danish køkkenmødding), or refuse dumps. Accordingly, the culture is less-commonly named the Kitchen Midden. As it is approximately identical to the Ellerbek culture of Schleswig-Holstein, the combined name, Ertebølle-Ellerbek is often used. The Ellerbek culture (German Ellerbek-Kultur) is named after a type site in Ellerbek, a community on the edge of Kiel, Germany. In the 1960s and 1970s another closely related culture was found in the (now dry) Noordoostpolder in the Netherlands, near the village Swifterbant and the former island of Urk. Named the Swifterbant culture (5,300 – 3,400 BCE) they show a transition from hunter-gatherer to both animal husbandry, primarily cows and pigs, and cultivation of barley and emmer wheat. During the formative stages contact with nearby Linear Pottery culture settlements in Limburg has been detected. Like the Ertebølle culture, they lived near open water, in this case creeks, riverdunes, and bogs along post-glacial banks of the Overijsselse Vechte. Recent excavations including the "Trijntje" skeleton show a local continuity going back to (at least) 5,600 BCE, when burial practices resembled the contemporary gravefields in Denmark and South Sweden "in all details", suggesting only part of a diverse ancestral "Ertebølle"-like heritage was locally continued into the later (Middle Neolithic) Swifterbant tradition (4,200 – 3,400 BCE). The Ertebølle culture was roughly contemporaneous with the Linear Pottery culture, food-producers whose northernmost border was located just to the south. The Ertebølle did not practice agriculture but it did use domestic grain in some capacity, which they must have obtained from the south. The Ertebølle culture replaced the earlier Kongemose culture of Denmark. It was limited to the north by the Scandinavian Nøstvet and Lihult cultures. It is divided into an early phase c. 5,400 BCE – c. 4,500 BCE, and a later phase c. 4,500 BCE – 3,950 BCE. Shortly after 4,100 BCE the Ertebølle began to expand along the Baltic coast at least as far as Rügen. Shortly thereafter it was replaced by the Funnelbeaker culture. In recent years archaeologists have found the acronym EBK most convenient, parallel to LBK for German Linearbandkeramik (Linear Pottery culture) and TRB for German Trichterbecher, Danish Tragtbæger (Funnelbeaker culture), and Dutch trechterbekercultuur. Ostensibly for Ertebølle Kultur, EBK could be either German or Danish, and has the added advantage that Ellerbek also begins with E.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
