The Belgian province of Limburg in Flanders (Dutch speaking Belgium) is a region which has had many names and border changes over its long recorded history. Its modern name is a name shared with the neighbouring province of the Netherlands, with which it was for a while politically united (under French and then Dutch rule from 1794 until 1839). The two provinces received their modern name after 1815, based upon the name of the medieval Duchy of Limburg, which had actually been in what is now neighbouring Wallonia, centred upon the town of Limbourg on the Vesdre.
For much of its recorded history, most of what is now called Belgian Limburg was the County of Loon (). Loon was a medieval county, and when the line of the Counts died the county became a lordship held by the Prince-bishop of Liège. It was still often referred to as the "land of Loon" (). The original capital of medieval Loon is today officially called Borgloon, but the capital of the modern province is now Hasselt.
A connection between Limburg and Liège is found not only in medieval times, but also old Roman administrative divisions. In Roman times, Belgian Limburg, and probably also the Dutch province of Limburg and the medieval Duchy of Limburg, were in the Civitas Tungrorum, which had its original capital in Tongeren, which is in Belgian Limburg. As in neighbouring regions, the Roman regional capital became the church capital in the Middle Ages, but this was then moved to a more defensive position on a river, in this case to Liège.
Prehistoric Belgian Limburg in the ice ages is assumed, like neighbouring areas of Europe, to have been home to dispersed populations of nomadic hunter gatherers including Neanderthals and later waves of early modern humans. Upper and Middle Paleolithic finds in Limburg are not common compared to findings to the south, in Belgium's Liège Province. In general terms, the area was part of the broadly defined cultural group known as the Magdalenian (17,000 BP to 9,000 BP), and then the Azilian. The particular type of Azilian was known as the Tjongerian, which is in turn part of the Federmesser group of Azilian cultures. Tjongerian finds have been made in Lommel, Zolder, and Zonhoven, on the southern edge of the sandy Campine lowlands in the north of the province.
In the younger Dryas, Limburg was inhabited first by the Ahrensburg culture, evidence of which has been found in Zonhoven. Later, the Tardenoisian culture was shared with all neighbouring areas (Belgian provinces of Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant, as well as areas in the Netherlands). It apparently arrived from France. One such site is in Ruiterskuil in Opglabbeek.
The Neolithic begins with the first farmers in the area who belonged to the LBK culture, arriving around 5000 BCE from the east, and remaining mainly in the south of Belgian Limburg, especially the southeastern corner of the province, between Tongeren and Maastricht. The sandy northern Campine lowlands were clearly not successful for them. Finds in neighbouring Dutch Limburg and Wallonia are more widely distributed. This was one of the westernmost colonizations of this first wave of farmers in northern Europe, and also a point of contact between farming and local non-farming cultures. So called Limburg pottery is a particular style associated with this western LBK culture, which is also associated with La Hoguette pottery and stretches into northern France. It has sometimes been argued that these technologies are the result of pottery technology spreading beyond the original LBK farming population, and being made by hunter gatherers. Another remarkable aspect of this version of the LBK culture is that some settlements show signs of being fortified, implying the threat of violence. The sandy north of Limburg appears to have become a contact area for hunter gatherers of the Swifterbant culture, who traded with the farmers.
The LBK culture appears to have disappeared from the area around 4000 BCE. Around 500 years later, in a second phase of the Neolithic of the area, the Michelsberg culture appeared in the region. It was a relatively less sedentary culture, which once again showed signs of concerns with fortification. A similar Michelsberg culture appeared in the Rhineland of Germany, and it also appears to be related to the Chasséen culture in northern France. But the Michelsberg in Belgium had distinct local features. If it developed locally, local hunters and gatherers may have played a role, but archaeological evidence is so far inconclusive about what happened. This culture was apparently able to spread into the Campine, or at least influence it more. During this period, there are stronger signs that the hunter-gatherer Swifterbant cultures of these areas were becoming involved in pottery and farming themselves.
In the third and late fourth millennia BCE, the whole of Flanders shows relatively little evidence of human habitation. Although it is felt that there was a continuing human presence, the types of evidence available make judgement about the details very difficult. To the south of Belgian Limburg, the Seine-Oise-Marne culture spread into the nearby Ardennes, and is associated with megalithic sites there. To the north and east, in the Netherlands, a semi-sedentary culture group has been proposed to have existed, the so-called Vlaardingen-Wartburg-Stein complex, which possibly developed from the above-mentioned Swifterbant and Michelsburg cultures. The same pattern continues into the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. In the last part of the Neolithic, evidence is found for the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultures in neighboring Dutch Limburg, but much less in Belgian Limburg. During the early and middle Bronze Age, Belgian Limburg is often considered to have been in the zone where the Hilversum culture lived, but finds are not in Belgian Limburg itself. This was a culture found in the southern and central Netherlands, and the Belgian coast, and is considered to be related to the contemporary Wessex culture of southern England.
During the late Bronze Age, Belgian Limburg received immigrants belonging to the Urnfield culture. These cremation practicing farmers caused a population increase which included the sandy north of Limburg, where pastoralism was also practiced. It is possible that these people brought the first Indo-European languages to Belgium. As in other areas of Europe where this culture arrived, the Urnfield culture was followed by the Iron Age Halstatt and La Tène cultures, both associated with Celtic languages and culture. It has been suggested that the original Urnfield population of the area stayed, and that the Halstatt and La Tène cultures were the result of new elites moving in, with new dialects of early Indo-European. Rich La Tène urn burials have been found in Eigenbilzen in Haspengouw and Wijshagen (Meeuwen-Gruitrode) in the Kempen. It is likely that the various peoples and languages that the Romans found in the region had to a large extent arrived during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The Eburones who were in this area when Caesar conquered it, are associated by archaeologists with a material culture which has its roots in local variations of the Urnfield culture. It is during the late Iron Age that there is archaeological evidence for the development of a "Celtic field" system in the less fertile Campine, and increasingly social stratification and centralization, even though the area remained relatively un-developed compared to other nearby parts of Europe.
Compared to surrounding areas of Europe, one remarkable thing about this pre-Roman period is the lack of hill forts, a pattern throughout all of Flanders. Only one is known in Limburg, at Caster or Castaert in Riemst, right in the southeastern corner of Limburg. In the rest of Flanders only one more is known, at Asse.
The "Germani" and the "Belgae"
The only surviving written source of information which is clearly and specifically about Belgian Limburg before it became part of the Roman Empire is Julius Caesar, who left a famous Commentary of his wars in the region, which were part of his Gallic campaign. In this period, this whole area, together with other areas towards the Ardennes in the south, and the Rhine to the north and east, was the homeland of one large tribal grouping known as the Germani cisrhenani, as well as a distinct tribe known as the Aduatuci. (Somewhat earlier, it seems that Poseidonius had also mentioned the Germani, saying that they roasted meat in separate joints, and drank milk and unmixed wine.Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, Book 4 reports the description of Poseidonius.)
The Germani cisrhenani tribes which Caesar named where the Eburones, the Condrusi, the Paemani (or Caemani), the Caeroesi, and the Segni."Gallic War" VI.32 The biggest and most important tribe were the Eburones, and it is they who appear to have dominated all or most of modern-day Belgian Limburg, with a territory probably stretching into the flat Campine (Dutch Kempen) northern part of this region, and also stretching into neighbouring regions of the Netherlands and Germany. The other tribes are thought to have lived further south, in what is today Wallonia, or else just over the border in Germany.
The term Germani for these Belgic tribes requires explanation in order to avoid confusion. Caesar also referred to other tribes living over the east of the Rhine as Germani, and he called that region Germania, the source of the modern word Germany. He may have been the first to extend the term in this way, apparently because he was told that this is where such people came from. (Something archaeologists have not been able to confirm.) So he distinguished the Germani in the Belgic area as "Germani cisrhenani", and treated the other "Germani" as the ones living in their real homeland. Confusingly, Caesar also treated the Germani cisrhenani as Belgic Gauls, a type of people he contrasted with the Germani, and his reports suggest that they also treated themselves this way. In fact he said that not only the Germani cisrhenani, but the biggest part of the Belgae where descended from Germani from over the Rhine, so possibly he saw other northern Belgic tribes such as the neighbouring Nervii as Germani cisrhenani in a broad "racial" sense. And Tacitus, some generations after Caesar, says that the Nervii of his time still claimed such a link (see below).
Concerning the question of when this supposed immigration from across the Rhine happened, it was at least some generations before Caesar. He reports that the Germani cisrhenani in the Limburg region were the only people in Gaul who had defended themselves successfully from the migrations of the Cimbri and Teutones in the second century BCE. The Aduatuci on the other hand, were descendants of those Cimbri who had been allowed to settle in a particular area within the region. In effect, Caesar used the term two different ways, and it is likely that the original narrow meaning of the word was specific to the people living in and around modern Limburg, in the later Roman Civitas Tungrorum.
Whether or not any of the Belgian Germani, or indeed the Aduatuci, spoke a Germanic language is uncertain. The names of their leaders and their tribes for the most part appear to have Celtic origins, which is in fact also true of the neighbouring tribes across the Rhine in "Germania" at that time, such the Tencteri and Usipetes. On the other hand, it has been argued by Maurits Gysseling and others that placename analysis shows that a Germanic language was being spoken in this region by the 2nd century BCE, and there are also signs of an older substrate language in the Belgic region. (See Nordwestblock.) So Celtic, while influential culturally, may never have been the main language of the area.