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Archaeological material was initially discovered in 1993, eroding from a small cliff on the north side of the peninsula of Asnæs near the town of Kalundborg in western Sjælland, Denmark. Ertebølle Excavations in 2007 exposed the Ertebøllwe cultural layer and obtained materials to describe the site and its contents before it was destroyed by the sea. The 22 m2 of careful excavations exposed a terrestrial midden deposit and the late Mesolithic cultural layer which had been partially preserved under a raised beach ridge. The flint tools consist primarily of projectile points, flake axes, some distally concave truncated blade knives, and a very few scrapers. There were large numbers of well-preserved faunal remains including bone fishhooks and preforms, seal bones, large bird bones, and an extraordinary amount of fish bone. A quantity of pottery was recovered in the excavations as well, including both pointed-bottom vessels and oval lamps in different sizes from the late Mesolithic and several examples of what are probably Early Neolithic ceramics. The rich occupation layer with its diverse artifactual content, including a fragment of a human jaw, documents a sizable residential settlement on the north coast of the Asnæs peninsula.

The c. 9m high tell-settlement of Pietrele-Magura Gorgana, situated close to the Danube river, is one of the westernmost sites of the Kod∫adermen-Gumelnita-Karanovo VI cultural complex that spread over the whole Westpontic region during the 5th millennium BC. Until recently tells were equated with the site when, in fact, they represent only the outstanding part of a far more complex settlement system as we now know from Pietrele thanks to geomagnetic prospections and subsequent excavations. People living on the tell, together with the inhabitants from the flat area around it, formed a vast community that must have had a strong impact on its habitat and, vice-versa, was strongly affected by the immediate surroundings. During the settlement period a lake covered huge parts of the floodplain. It provided not only a considerable part of the diet, but ensured, through the direct access to the main river, continuous and extensive over-regional exchange.