The successor of western branch of the Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture, with which is has many features in common. Its main distribution was in Rhineland and central and southern Germany, parallel to Lengyel culture in Czechoslovakia and mid-Danube. It is characterized by pottery with complex incised geometric motifs and by sites with trapezoidal longhouses. Radiocarbon dates indicate early 4th millennium BC. It is named after a cemetery site in Halle with 70 burials accompanied by bone and jet necklaces, shaft-hole-stone axes, and some long trapezoidal ones.