Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Recent Advances in the Prehistory of Liguria and Neighboring Regions," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The region of Liguria, located in NW Italy, has recently regained prominence in several of the central questions in Old World prehistory. These include, among others, Neanderthal adaptations, an early appearance of anatomically modern Homo sapiens, Gravettian lifeways, Epigravettian funerary rituals and the adoption of an agricultural way of life in the sixth millennium BCE. Given this recent surge of research, including the re-excavation and revision of old sites and the discovery of new ones both in Liguria and immediately neighboring regions (Provence, Monaco, Piemonte, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany), this session proposes to bring together members of the teams actively working on the prehistory of the region to present an up-to-date overview of the state of research there. It will follow the 53rd annual meeting of the Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria that will have been held in October 2018 in Genoa for the first time since 1977, and help broadcast and synthesize some of this cutting-edge research to an English-speaking audience as well.