Abstract

The period under review is one of the few moments of Italian prehistory in which the archaeological record permits determination of the arrival of foreign-born groups in conjunction with the disintegration of an indigenous world of ancient tradition. Studies related to this phase of the Neolithic mainly refer to the observations of Bagolini (Bagolini and Biagi 1987; Bagolini 1998) taken from various other authors (Barfield et al 2000), which outline a framework for northern Italy multifaceted , created by the interaction between the people of the local culture of Square Mouth Pottery and people of culture Chassey from France, as well as by contributions from the North Alpine acquiring increasing importance over time (Chapter 1). The meeting, which took place from area to area at different times and different ways between half V millennium and half IV millennium BC, seems to have produced along the coastal and transalpine paths especially related to the exchange of raw materials (green stones, obsidian, flint), but also of technological expertise. In reading these new interactions, therefore, is the ability to explain the crisis in the world of Western culture in the first half of the fourth millennium, whose disintegration develop experiences in which today stand out above all the traits of discontinuity with the earlier traditions (various Authors in Ferrari et al 2002a). The Emilia is a crossroads of all the direct and indirect contributions to the circles mentioned above. This is demonstrated by the marked variability observed in cultural sites are also close, attributed mainly to differences in chronological (Bagolini 1981), but also resulting complex interweaving of cultural routes. This region is therefore an area for privileged observation to assess how to meet, including conflict, interaction and assimilation between different human groups that have settled or still have covered the territory in the period under review. If the reference framework outlined by Bagolini in the 80s remains roughly shared, the development of the cultural debate, the recent discoveries in the study of the sites proposed by Emilian this PhD work will allow further information and updates. The contexts Emilia object of this work are those published and unpublished due to the last centuries of the fifth millennium BC and the early fourth cal. In detail it is the site of S. Andrea in Travo (Chapter 5) and Le Mose in Piacenza (Chapter 4), Vignola Fiorenzuola (chapter 7), Box Office (Chapter 6) and Vighi and Parma (Chapter 7), S.ILARIO d'Enza (Reggio Emilia) (Chapter 7). The study focused on the analysis of the ceramic industry, from the point of view of both technological and typological (Chapter 3), in order to better define the internal chronology of the different sites. From this analysis were in fact identified a number of representative types, for which it has been proposed a relative chronology useful in order to reconstruct a chronological framework to realize the variability observed in Emilia at the turn of the fifth millennium BC. In this reading, the sites of Travo and Le Mose proved to be the most useful in the construction of this trial-type first of all because it is multi-staged sites. The study of the stratigraphy of Travo and Le Mose of the different settlement phases from the VBQ I to Late Neolithic, in fact, has provided important data for the evaluation of the different diachronic cultural indicators.