Learning outcomes

The aim of the cours is to prepare the student to manage the general topics on the cultural and economic evolution of the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic societies, in relation with the most relevant ecological changes. The geographic contexts are the African and the South-western Asiatic continents, but above all Europe, due to the dramatic geographic, climatic and bio-cultural changes which mostly occurred during the Middle and Late Pleistocene.

Program

The course covers the chronological and cultural interval spanning from the oldest appearance of Modern Human Behaviour in Africa, represented from a set of different evidence, up to the complex record of last hunter-gatherers and the first productive neolithic societies. Following the geographic dispersion from the African continent of the species of Hominins which succedeed up to the Anatomically Modern Humans, the most important steps in the evolution of culture will be taken into consideration.
The chronology of the Palaeolithic, the Mesolithic and the Neolithic will be the reference scale for discussing the impact of innovations in technology which has supported the human population to interact in a more complex way with the ecological context than in earlier times. The dynamics of human peopling will be assessed in relation to modifications in the distribution of lithic, vegetal and alimentary resources.
The main topics are listed below:
- the emergence of the first knapping stone technologies in Africa and their impact;
- the first southeuropean peopling, contests and models;
- appearance of bifaces, the Acheulean and the North-european peopling;
- from the Lower to the Middle Palaeolithic, technological changes and in the Human-resources interaction;
- the age of the Neandertal Man: economy, technologies, settlements;
- the appearance of Homo sapiens in Africa and the first spreads;
- Anatomically Modern Humans and the Others: the state of art. Hypotheses, models and methodological problems;
- The Neandertal demise in Eurasia.
- The lower and middle phases of the Upper Palaeolithic: Aurignacian and Gravettian and climatic and ecological interactions;
- The Upper Palaeolithic during the Late-Glacial, demographic increase;
- The Holocene, the Mesolithic, the colonization of the ecological extremes, the demografic increase.
- The Neolithic, the first colonization of Europe and Italy, settlements and cultures.

Examination Methods

Examination will be oral.