Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht

Belvédère

[reconstruction of the hunters' daily life]

Following upon the discovery in 1980 of a flint tool in one of the older layers at the Belvédère quarry, a large-scale study of the traces of the earliest inhabitants of the Netherlands and of their environment was started, which lasted several years.

In the quarry, resting on top of chalk or 'mergel' of late Cretaceous and early Tertiary age, follows an 8 m thick layer of gravel, deposited by the River Maas during an iceage. On top of the gravel rests a layer of fine sand dating from a warmer period and also deposited by the Maas. The sand is covered by two layers of loess, which was brought here by winds during the last ice age

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[map of the Belvédère]

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Loess
This fine-grained loam is also referred to as 'Limburg clay' and consists of 65% quartz grains, 20% clay minerals and 15% calcium carbonate. In the course of time especially the older loess layers as well as the uppermost layer have become decalcified. The loess in southern Limburg was deposited in at least 10 distinct phases. This took place during ice ages 350,000 to 10,000 years ago. In the northwest of Europe, which during these ice ages had very little vegetation or none at all, winds blew freely: dust and sand were distributed over large distances. In southern Limburg, hilly and with hardly any vegetation at the time, this dust settled. Through the ages a loess deposit of an average thickness of 5 m (in some places up to 20 m) formed in this way. The loess area of southern Limburg is part of the loess region which extends from northern France and Belgium to far into the Rhine area. In turn this region constitutes part of a worldwide loess belt situated between 30 and 60 north latitude. In China the thickest loess deposits are found: in some places layers reach thicknesses of 90 metres.