Hinkelstein culture

 ( Archaeological Cultures Of Europe ) 

The Hinkelstein culture is a Neolithic Europe 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 dialects, 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".

• Jean-Paul Farrugia: Hinkelstein, explication d'une seriation (Coll Interreg. Neol. 1997), S. 467-517.
• C. Koehl: Neue Stein- und frühmetallzeitliche Gräberfunde bei Worms. Korrbl. DAG 31, 1900, 137-142.
• E. Probst: Deutschland in der Steinzeit, München 1986
• H. Spatz: Hinkelstein und Großgartach - Kontinuität und Wandel. In AiD 3/1996 S. 8-13