Trattamento e conservazione degli alimenti durante la preistoria recente nell'Italia centro-meridionale

The subject of management of food resources among prehistoric communities has received increasing attention among Italian scholars in recent years, so that a number of data, including spatial analyses and use-wear analyses, are now available that can help us in reconstructing social practices related to food processing and storage among prehistoric societies with productive economy. Patterns of food management and processing fall into the patterns of behaviour that characterised specific human groups. Therefore, their study allows us to explore cultural boundaries and changes in the organisations of such types of activities that can be related to processes of social transformations. In the light of these issues, authors compare and contrast various contexts on both a synchronic and diachronic scale with the aim of highlighting similarities and differences in the patterns of food processing and storage in central-southern Italy from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Significant key-study contexts are analysed. Moreover, the potential of use-wear analyses on lithic artefacts is specifically discussed.