Contact: Dr. Walpurga Antl-Weiser
The Neolithic collection at the Natural History Museum contains finds stretching from the Early Neolithic cultures to the
Bell Beaker Culture at the end of the Neolithic period. All in all the collection comprises roughly 250,000 individual objects.
The most important parts of the collection include the outstanding finds from Brunn am Gebirge, whose oldest pottery can be
compared with that of Early Neolithic cultures in the Balkans, and numerous objects from the Middle Neolithic period discovered
in Wetzleinsdorf in Lower Austria. These objects include a rich variety of human and animal sculptures from the Middle Neolithic
period, most of which were found in Wetzleinsdorf. As with the Palaeolithic collection, there is also a large number of objects
from the Karst caves of Moravia. The most famous collection find from the Middle Neolithic Age is a female figure on a throne
excavated in Pazardžik, Bulgaria.
Dating from around 4000 BC, the gold discs and solid copper objects from Stollhof in Lower Austria are the oldest Early Copper
Age metal finds discovered in Austria.
The largest Late Neolithic finds in the prehistoric collection come from the settlements in Mödling/Jennyberg, Vienna Ober
St. Veit and Ossarn, as well as the large collection of Alpine pile dwellings, which have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage
Site.
The richly decorated copper axe from Lušice in Moravia and the bell beaker finds from Laa an der Thaya bring the Neolithic
collection to a close from a chronological point of view. The oldest prehistoric amber object ever discovered in Austria comes
from a Bell Beaker Culture grave found in Laa a.d. Thaya.
