The book focuses on the Castelnovian cultural complex, which developed during the recent Mesolithic between south-eastern France, Italy and western Slovenia. Namely, it aims at the reconstruction of settlement dynamics and lithic technical systems in the Emilia region (Northern Italy) within the wider context of southern Europe. To reach these objectives all the collections of the museums from this area have been examined, amounting to a total of 55 sites, some of which are here published for the first time.The results obtained confirm the appearance in Emilia during the Castelnovian of important technical innovations, along with the persistence of some aspects which were characteristic of the previous phase, while the settlement choices and mobility patterns do not seem to have changeed significantly from those identified for the ancient Mesolithic (Sauveterrian complex).The authors therefore conclude that the important changes which characterized the Castelnovian in the region cannot be ascribed to a replacement of populations, but can probably be traced back to other cultural and social phenomena which the current state of research cannot better identify.
