Early Italy Cultures (Neolithic)

The system which has evolved to catalogue the various archaeological expressions of human progress is one which involves cultures. The task of cataloguing the vast range of human cultures which emerged from Africa and the Near East right up until human expansion reached the Americas is covered in the related feature (see link, right).

Subsequent cultural complexity appeared and increased as human populations increased. What had been a single human culture across Europe eventually divided in two which - at least at first - can be equated to Northern Europe and Southern Europe.

Within the latter region, Early Italy formed a southern zone below Central Europe. Today contained entirely within modern Italy, it also included the Alpine region and its complex history. The area's role in human development played a minimal role in the Italian Mesolithic between about 10,000-5000 BC, but a more notable role in the subsequent Neolithic.

The arrival of Neolithic Farmers in Mesolithic Greece between about 7000-6700 BC sparked the start there of the Sesklo culture and a gradual but rapid increase in farming communities across the Balkans and the northern Mediterranean coast. The latter spread is classed as the Impressed Ware culture, of which the Cardial Pottery culture is a more location-specific class.

The earliest Impressed Ware sites can be dated to 6400-6200 BC for Epirus and Corfu. Slightly later settlements are known in Albania and Dalmatia between 6100-5900 BC, and then in south-eastern Italy at about 6000 BC. This pattern of spread suggests a gradual sea-based outwards migratory wave of these Neolithic pioneers.

They ventured from the western coast of Greece to head northwards across the Adriatic, splaying out towards the northern coast of Croatia and into the Italian peninsula. Within a century or two, Impressed Ware settlements had spread to the northern end of the Adriatic, and had extended through Umbria and into the Po valley. Pretty soon the entire eastern side of the Apennines was settled between coast and foothills.

Encounters between the first farmers and the people of existing Mesolithic communities tended to produce regional variants of the two main strands of impressed pottery and linear pottery. This often results in a bewildering array of localised archaeological cultures in Italy.

The Tavoliere in south-eastern Italy consists of undulating tableland between the Apennines and the upland massif of Gargano. Over five hundred enclosed settlements have been found within this comparatively restricted region of about fifty by eighty kilometres, with this being one of the earliest regions to be settled by Neolithic arrivals.

One of the most important sites in southern Italy is that of La Starza (Ariano Irpino), which was populated almost continuously throughout the entire Neolithic. The site has an impressive stratigraphic succession, a continuously evolving ceramic industry, and a village of huts which initially was simple but later was fortified. The site is located on a chalky cliff near a perennial spring.

The westwards spread of the Neolithic economy reached Calabria and eastern Sicily after 6000 BC. Sicily already contained well-established Mesolithic foragers. They quickly took up Neolithic innovations and integrated them to create new mixed and mobile farming practices. It was probably along the sea routes from Calabria and Sicily that the lands and islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea could be settled.

Corsica and Sardinia were probably the first to be reached. Both Islands were already inhabited by Mesolithic foragers but that local population seems to have been sparse. It was into an almost empty landscape that Neolithic settlers entered around 6000 BC to create a number of regional cultural expressions in Early Sardinia. The situation on Corsica is less clear.

The main Neolithic dwelling was a circular hut with a sunken floor, a central hearth both for heating and cooking, and a smoke-hole in the top of the wattle-and-daub roof. The people lacked any sort of metal tools and did not practice weaving. Knives and axes were of stone and clothing made use of animal skins. Their primary means of subsistence was foraging and hunting while early farming techniques were still being developed and the first crops were being nurtured.

As elsewhere, the Neolithic in Italy transitioned gradually into Chalcolithic Italy. This period saw the earliest examples of metalworking in the peninsula even though it had already been practiced in Central Europe for several hundred years.

European Kingdoms

Early Cultures

Images and text copyright © all contributors mentioned on this page. An original king list page for the History Files.