Challenging the reality of the Sauveterrian cultural facies in Southern France and Northern Italy

Abstract : The Early Mesolithic is one of the best known periods in European prehistory because of the very rich evidence yielded by archaeological researches during the last century. Nonetheless, most works carried out in this time span were focused on a regional or even site-oriented perspective. This can be partially connected to the general reduction of provisioning territories attested since the last part of the Pleistocene and the significant differences in material culture recorded by the archaeological evidence. Most likely, there is also a research-related reason for this, stemming out of the uneven interpretation of material culture as a distinctive marker of human groups variability. Western Europe is a clear example of this: while in the northern region researchers distinguished a high number of cultural entities on the base of differences in microliths shape and size, in the southern one a highest importance was given to common features leading to the creation of a large Sauveterrian territory. A recent revision of some of the most important sites from this latter area, gave us the opportunity to interrogate our evidence in this perspective in order to assess to what extent such situation could be related to a bias driven interpretation.