Becoming post-Neolithic: Social Process and Transformation in Southern Italian Deathways

Abstract

Models of how the European Neolithic transitioned to the Copper or Bronze Age have often emphasised changes in burial practices, and these changes have traditionally been seen as simple, decisive shifts. In peninsular Italy, this transition is often described in terms of a straightforward shift from single burial to multiple burial in collective tombs. This paper questions that view, presenting a systematic statistical analysis of all known Neolithic (6000–3800 BCE) burials from across southern Italy. Tracking changes in aspects of funerary practices across these millennia from over 100 sites and almost 700 individuals, we show that neither abrupt stadial change nor a model of continuous gradual change describes the evidence well. Instead, all periods of the Neolithic featured multiple depositional practices, many of which continued throughout the entire timespan; what changed was their relative frequencies and the ways they were combined. This suggests, in turn, that change originated mostly in a process of local bricolage, not from large or external causal factors.