Lithic techno-complexes in Italy from 50 to 39 thousand years BP: an overview of lithic technological changes across the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic boundary

TL;DR

This paper reviews lithic technological changes in Italy from 50 to 39 thousand years BP, highlighting differences across cultural traditions and contributing to understanding the Neanderthal to modern human transition in Europe.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive synthesis of lithic evidence from key Italian sites, offering new hypotheses on technological shifts during the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic boundary.

Findings

Major differences in lithic technologies across traditions

Identification of specific technological features

Implications for Neanderthal and modern human interactions

Abstract

Defining the processes involved in the technical/cultural shifts from the Late Middle to the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe (~50-39 thousand years BP) is one of the most important tasks facing prehistoric studies. In this debate Italy plays a pivotal role, due to its geographical position between eastern and western Mediterranean Europe as well as to it being the location of several sites showing Late Mousterian, Uluzzian and Protoaurignacian evidence distributed across the Peninsula. Our study aims to provide a synthesis of the available lithic evidence from this key area through a review of the evidence collected from a number of reference sites. The main technical features of the Late Mousterian, the Uluzzian and the Protoaurignacian traditions are examined from a diachronic and spatial perspective. Our overview allows the identification of major differences in the technological behaviour of these populations, making it possible to propose a number of specific working hypotheses on the basis of which further studies can be carried out. This study presents a detailed comparative study of the whole corpus of the lithic production strategies documented during this interval, and crucial element thus emerge.These data are of primary importance in order to assess the nature of the "transition" phenomenon in Italy, thus contributing to the larger debate about the disappearance of Neandertals and the arrival of early Modern Humans in Europe.