Variability of lithic technical systems in the Sauveterrian of the Southern Po Plain area

This paper represents a preliminary attempt aimed at reconstructing lithic systems and their possible relationships with other technical and socio-economic aspects of early Mesolithic groups’ life in the Southern side of the Po Plain, Northern Italy. Particularly analyses have focused on a set of lithic assemblages brought to light at five open-air sites located between the provinces of Bologna (I.N.F.S., Casalecchio di Reno and Cava Due Portoni), Parma (Collecchio) and Piacenza (Le Mose) for which stratigraphical data and palaeoenvironmental studies support an Early Holocene age. Although the lithic assemblages show to share the same volumetric principles and criteria of selection and modification of blanks, analyses have highlighted a considerable variability among them which seems to reflect - at least in part - the strict relation to local environments and the high adaptation capacities of human groups. Unfortunately possible differences due the divergent chronology - within the early Holocene - of these assemblages cannot be better evaluated so far due to a lack of absolute dating for most of them.