Neolithic Italy refer to the period that spanned from circa 6000 BCE, when Neolithic influences from the east reached the Italian peninsula and the surrounding island bringing the Neolithic Revolution, to circa 3500-3000 BCE, when metallurgy began to spread. [1]
In the Western Mediterranean region the first wave of neolithization came by sea, with the spread of the Cardium pottery (or Impressed Ware), decorated with impressions mainly obtained through the shell of the genus Cardium (hence the nickname cardial ceramic), on all the coasts of Western Mediterranean, from Liguria, to southern France and Spain. Central Europe was instead hit by another, related but different, wave that went up the Danube, bringing the Linear Pottery (Linienbandkeramik). The meeting between the farmers and the European Mesolithic communities produced many regional variations of the two main strands of Impressed pottery and Linear Pottery.
In Southern Italy the impressed pottery Neolithic culture spread, between the second half of the sixth millennium BC and the beginning of V, especially in the Tavoliere delle Puglie, Irpinia and Basilicata, from where it spread to the north and the interior and the Tyrrhenian coast. In Sicily there was more continuity with the local Mesolithic communities. The island of Lipari was colonized at the beginning of the fifth millennium BC by people coming from Sicily for the exploitation of its deposits of obsidian.
In Central Italy the presence of the Apennines caused the formation of different regional horizons on the Tyrrhenian side and on the Adriatic one, with different cultural facies that succeeded each other with some overlaps. In Sardinia, the exploitation of the obsidian deposits of the Monte Arci led to the early development of the Neolithic cultures, introduced with the culture of the impressed pottery in the early sixth millennium BC.
In Northern Italy a variant of the Impressed Ware, established himself on the Ligurian coast in the first half of the sixth millennium BC. While in the process of neolithization of Northwest Italy occurs through influences of the Ligurian Impressed Ware, in Romagna the facies of the Adriatic Impressed Ceramic spread around the middle of the fifth millennium BC thanks to the contribution of the connected groups of the Abruzzo-Marche Impressed Ware. [2] At the end of the millennium the area of the Po Valley was subdivided by a mosaic of cultures united by the ceramic decoration. At the beginning of the fifth millennium BC the former cultural mosaic was replaced by the culture of the square mouthed vases, widespread from Liguria to Veneto.
| Middle Neolithic archaeological cultures | |
|---|---|
| Passo di Corvo facies | |
| Scaloria Bassa facies | |
| Capri-Lipari-Scaloria Alta facies | |
| Serra d'Alto facies |
| Middle Neolithic archaeological cultures | |
|---|---|
| Stentinello culture | |
| Capri-Lipari-Scaloria Alta facies | |
| Serra d'Alto facies |
| Middle Neolithic archaeological cultures | |
|---|---|
| Catignano culture | |
| Linear Ceramic culture |
| Middle Neolithic archaeological cultures |
|---|
| Bonu Ighinu culture |
| Middle Neolithic archaeological cultures |
|---|
| Square Mouthed Vases culture |
| Late Neolithic archaeological cultures | |
|---|---|
| Serra d'Alto acromo style | |
| Diana-Bellavista style |
| Late Neolithic archaeological cultures |
|---|
| Diana culture |
| Late Neolithic archaeological cultures | |
|---|---|
| Ripoli culture | |
| Chassey, Late Diana Ripoli culture |
| Late Neolithic archaeological cultures | |
|---|---|
| San Ciriaco culture | |
| Arzachena culture | |
| Ozieri culture |
| Late Neolithic archaeological cultures | |
|---|---|
| Ligurian Chassey facies | |
| Lagozza culture | |
| Late Diana Ripoli culture |
![Reconstruction of a neolithic woman, Trento science museum [it] Homo sapiens - Neolithic - reconstruction - MUSE.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Homo_sapiens_-_Neolithic_-_reconstruction_-_MUSE.jpg/220px-Homo_sapiens_-_Neolithic_-_reconstruction_-_MUSE.jpg)
From the middle of the sixth millennium BC the Neolithic groups in Italy began a wider exploitation of local resources: they developed the domestication of wild species, such as cattle and pigs, with a "mixed" economy between agriculture (attested by the presence of mills, grinders and sickles) and livestock in predominantly permanent settlements. [3] However hunting, fishing and shellfishing were still important activities.
Obsidian, valuable raw material for the making of tools, played a major role in the trades of the neolithic communities; the most important deposits were located in Sardinia (Monte Arci), at Lipari, Pantelleria and Palmarola. [4] From there it was exported in the Italian peninsula but also in Southern France and in North Africa.
Late in the last phase of the Neolithic period in Sardinia and Val d'Aosta appeared new religious ideologies related to the introduction of megalithism from the west.
The Aeolian Islands, sometimes referred to as the Lipari Islands or Lipari group after their largest island, are a volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily, said to be named after Aeolus, the mythical ruler of the winds. The islands' inhabitants are known as Aeolians. The islands had a permanent population of 14,224 at the 2011 census; the latest official estimate is 15,419 as of 1 January 2019. The Aeolian Islands are a popular tourist destination in the summer and attract up to 600,000 visitors annually.
Lipari is a comune including six of seven islands of the Aeolian Islands and it is located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northern coast of Sicily, southern Italy; it is administratively part of the Metropolitan City of Messina. Its population is 12,821, but during the May to September tourist season, the total population may reach up to 20,000. It is also the name of the biggest island in the archipelago, where the main urban area of the comune is located.
Liguria is a region of north-western Italy; its capital is Genoa. Its territory is crossed by the Alps and the Apennines mountain range and is roughly coextensive with the former territory of the Republic of Genoa. Liguria is bordered by France to the west, Piedmont to the north, and Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany to the east. It rests on the Ligurian Sea, and has a population of 1,557,533. The region is part of the Alps–Mediterranean Euroregion.
The European Neolithic is the period from the arrival of Neolithic technology and the associated population of Early European Farmers in Europe, c. 7000 BC until c. 2000–1700 BC. The Neolithic overlaps the Mesolithic and Bronze Age periods in Europe as cultural changes moved from the southeast to northwest at about 1 km/year – this is called the Neolithic Expansion.
The Apennine culture is a technology complex in central and southern Italy from the Italian Middle Bronze Age. In the mid-20th century the Apennine was divided into Proto-, Early, Middle and Late sub- phases, but now archaeologists prefer to consider as "Apennine" only the ornamental pottery style of the later phase of Middle Bronze Age (BM3). This phase is preceded by the Grotta Nuova facies and by the Protoapennine B facies and succeeded by the Subapennine facies of 13th-century. Apennine pottery is a burnished ware incised with spirals, meanders and geometrical zones, filled with dots or transverse dashes. It has been found on Ischia island in association with LHII and LHIII pottery and on Lipari in association with LHIIIA pottery, which associations date it to the Late Bronze Age as it is defined in Greece and the Aegean.
The Comb Ceramic culture or Pit-Comb Ware culture, often abbreviated as CCC or PCW, was a northeast European culture characterised by its Pit–Comb Ware. It existed from around 4200 BCE to around 2000 BCE. The bearers of the Comb Ceramic culture are thought to have still mostly followed the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, with traces of early agriculture.
Cardium pottery or Cardial ware is a Neolithic decorative style that gets its name from the imprinting of the clay with the heart-shaped shell of the Corculum cardissa, a member of the cockle family Cardiidae. These forms of pottery are in turn used to define the Neolithic culture which produced and spread them, commonly called the "Cardial culture".
The prehistory of Italy began in the Paleolithic period, when species of Homo colonized the Italian territory for the first time, and ended in the Iron Age, when the first written records appeared in Italy.
Aratashen is a town in the Armavir Province of Armenia. It is located on the Ararat Plain.
The prehistory of Corsica is analogous to the prehistories of the other islands in the Mediterranean Sea, such as Sicily, Sardinia, Malta and Cyprus, which could only be accessed by boat and featured cultures that were to some degree insular; that is, modified from the traditional Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic of European prehistoric cultures. The islands of the Aegean Sea and Crete early developed Bronze Age civilizations and are accordingly usually treated under those categories. Stone Age Crete however shares some of the features of the prehistoric Mediterranean islands.
Neolithic Greece is an archaeological term used to refer to the Neolithic phase of Greek history beginning with the spread of farming to Greece in 7000–6500 BC, and ending around 3200 BC. During this period, many developments occurred such as the establishment and expansion of a mixed farming and stock-rearing economy, architectural innovations, as well as elaborate art and tool manufacturing. Neolithic Greece is part of the Prehistory of Southeastern Europe.
La Almagra, also known as ″La Almagra Pottery culture″ is a red pottery found in a number of archaeological sites of the Neolithic period in Spain. It is not known how it relates to other pottery of the Neolithic period.
The Rinaldone culture was an Eneolithic culture that spread between the 4th and the 3rd millennium BC in northern and central Lazio, in southern Tuscany and, to a lesser extent, also in Marche and Umbria. It takes its name from the town of Rinaldone, near Montefiascone in the province of Viterbo, northern Lazio.
The Laterza culture or Laterza-Cellino San Marco culture is an Eneolithic culture in Southern Italy. It takes its name from the tombs discovered in the locality of Laterza, near Taranto, and Cellino San Marco, near Brindisi, in Apulia. It developed in Apulia and Basilicata, and to a lesser extent of Central Italy in the 3rd millennium BC, around 2950-2350 BC. As with many of the cultures of the late prehistoric period, it is known essentially from the style of pottery recovered from archaeological digs. The culture was defined in 1967 by Francesco Biancofiore, following research in a necropolis of the same name situated to the north-west of the city of Taranto, in southern Apulia.
The Pre-Nuragic period refers to the prehistory of Sardinia from the Paleolithic until the middle Bronze Age, when the Nuragic civilization flourished on the island.
The Bonuighinu culture or Bonu Ighinu culture, sometimes also called Bonu Ighinu Phase, is a middle neolithic, pre-Nuragic culture from Sardinia and roughly dates to the first half of the 5th millennium BC. It takes its name from a locality in the municipality of Mara, province of Sassari, where the cave of Sa de Ucca of Tintirriolu is located. The first Bonu Ighinu pottery was discovered here by Renato Loria and David H. Trump in 1971.
Prehistoric Albania, compared to the other regions of the Mediterranean Europe, was relatively lately inhabited by Homo sapiens. The earliest known human settlement dates back to the Upper Paleolithic, 40,000 BC in the Kryegjata Valley, near the antique site of Apollonia. Several further Paleolithic sites have been excavated, out of which the most prominent ones are the cave of Konispol, the flint tools found near Xarrë, the shelters of the Blaz Cave near Urakë and the habitation of Mount Dajt, then during the period of the Mesolithic the aforementioned Kryegjata, Konispol and Gajtan sites represent more developed stone, flint and horn tools. Another important site of the Mesolithic industrial activity is the flint mine of Goranxi that was in operation around 7,000 BC.
Stone Age in Azerbaijan is divided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods. It was studied in Karabakh, Gazakh, Lerik, Gobustan, and Nakhchivan. Stone materials belonging to the Stone Age were found by Mammadali Huseynov in the Shorsu gorge located near the village of Gyrag Kasaman in Qazakh region. According to his research, people have first settled in the territory of Azerbaijan 2 million years ago. The Stone Age era involved two different human species: Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens.
Dalma culture was a prehistoric archaeological culture of north-western Iran dating to early fifth millennium B.C. Later, it spread into the central Zagros region and elsewhere in adjacent areas. Its widespread ceramic remains were excavated in central and northern valleys of the Zagros Mountains in north-western Iran. Dalma assemblages were initially discovered by the excavations carried out at Dalma Tepe and Hasanlu Tepe in south-western parts of Lake Urmia, in the valley of Solduz.
Osmantəpə is an early Neolithic settlement near Kükü village, in the Shahbuz District of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan.
