Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2014
Investigations into the ceramic typology of the southern Italian neolithichave helped little in the understanding of neolithic origins there. In thispaper the evidence of the radiocarbon chronology is used to demonstrate theantiquity of the southern Italian neolithic. There are now sufficient sixthmillennium bc dates to suggest that the appearance there of a neolithic withmixed impressed and red-painted wares was contemporary with the earliestneolithic of both Greece and the West Mediterranean, while the penetrationof those traits further north into Italy seems to have been delayed.