NEANDERTHALS, ANATOMICALLY MODERN HUMANS, AND 'MODERN HUMAN BEHAVIOUR' IN ITALY

Summary.   Traditionally, accounts of the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition focus almost exclusively on the evidence from south-western Europe. Interpretations based on data from this area are then generalized to produce a relatively uncomplicated pan-European model, with the appearance of novel technologies, new patterns of land use, expanded social networks, and the emergence of complex forms of symbolic communication involving art and personal ornaments, all pointing to the appearance of 'modern human behaviour' in Europe about 40,000 years ago. This paper presents an impartial review of the important but often neglected evidence from Italy, and shows that models positing a single spatiotemporal origin for 'modern human behaviour' are too simplistic.