Many people collect things—maybe you do, too. Through their collections, they reflect on the world in which they live. This room displays a small portion of the collection of the Lette Local History Association, including fossils from the Cretaceous Period, pottery from the Neolithic Period, money, tools, everyday objects, and unique items.
Like sediments, the objects have accumulated here on the wall. Across from them, you’ll see “The History of Lette in 20 Objects.”
We’d like to highlight a few very special pieces: Among the sediments, for example, you’ll see:
The brown-gray pottery is a good five thousand years old: it dates from the Neolithic period. The first people who settled here and built permanent houses had their own culture. You can distinguish between cultures based on the pottery, for example; this piece is from the Funnel Beaker Culture. Imagine: Two students discovered it at a construction site in Lette in the 1990s—the vessels were buried about 40 cm deep in the ground.
The house model next to it is a special treasure from the collection and was built with love.
The bonnets were traditionally important garments of the local folk costume. Because of their flat shape, these are called “plate bonnets.” The material and decoration—that is, the shape, color, and ribbon—revealed whether a woman was, for example, single or married, or whether she was poor or rich. If she was in mourning, there was a black ribbon on the bonnet.
In general, people used decorated objects to brighten up their daily lives—and to enjoy various treats for drinking, eating, and smoking.
Lette’s emblem is the windmill, which is why it can be seen on all sorts of objects: plates and jugs, ashtrays, tobacco boxes, and piggy banks. Today, wind energy is very important to Lette—it is home to one of the largest wind farms in the country.
And among the 20 objects, there’s also something very special:
A tiny piece of a dinosaur eggshell. It’s probably the smallest object in the exhibition. And next to it: a large ammonite. During the Cretaceous Period, about 65 million years ago, there was a vast ocean here, and the ammonite was found here. It’s a marine snail. And although they were good at fishing with their 10 tentacles, these snails went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs.
The tusk and the milk tusk are from mammoths—specifically woolly mammoths—and the large one is the first to have been found in Westphalia—in the sand quarry of the Westquarz company in Letter Bruch. That was a real sensation! It’s at least 12,000 years old. An adult mammoth like that could grow up to 3.50 meters tall. The other tooth is from almost the smallest mammal here: a mouse.
In Lette’s first church, people probably rummaged through their pockets—and when something fell out, some items rolled into the cracks in the wooden floor; women’s items like darning needles on one side, men’s items like pipe tampers on the other, since women and men sat separately. Such items were later found during an excavation. And coins from all eras, like this one featuring the Coesfeld ox head.