Human occupation at the Southern Po Plain margin in the Early Mesolithic: the contribution of technological and typological studies.

This paper focuses on a set of Early Holocene lithic assemblages brought to light in the last 20 years at five open-air sites identified along the Southern margin of the Po Plain, between the cities of Bologna and Piacenza. The technological and typological studies carried out indicate that the assemblages share several aspects allowing them to be referred to the same cultural complex (i.e. Sauveterrian, Early Mesolithic of Northern Italy). Nevertheless each of them is characterized by some specific features concerning raw material provisioning, reduction sequences, typology and the use of the microburin technique. In the concluding remarks we discuss the possible factors that may influence such variability, namely raw material characteristics, activities carried out at the sites, chronology and the “cultural” identities of human groups.