Social networks and connectivity among the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic foragers of the Balkans and Italy

Major environmental perturbations over the last glacial period, with considerable changes in sea levels, have significantly affected the spatial organization of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic huntergatherer communities between the Balkans and Italy. For this reason, these regions are an ideal case for studying how different environmental factors could affect connectivity among human groups and rates of innovation. Italy and the Balkans are also key transitory regions for various dispersal events in the evolutionary history of the European continent that brought different hominin taxa into Europe from the areas of Africa and South-western Asia. Yet, compared to various well-researched regional hot-spots in central and western Europe, the picture of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic adaptations remains coarse-grained in particular in the Balkans as a result of a historical research bias followed by unsettled recent history preventing the application of new research methodologies. In this paper, we aim to highlight particular examples of connectivity across large tracks of land during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic and to point out the potential that social network thinking has in the study of the Balkans and Italy.