Islands in the Stream: Stone Age Cultural Dynamics in Sardinia and Corsica

Recent research on Sardinia and Corsica demonstrates the antiquity of human occupation on these islands, the extent and continuity of extrainsular contacts, and the overwhelming evidence for indigenous development of complex societies. Sufficient data are available to describe these Stone Age cultures in some detail, and to illustrate the dynamic nature of insular developments and inter-regional interactions.

Preneolithic settlements on both Sardinian and Corsica demonstrate the maritime capabilities of local populations, and their ability to subsist on these islands without benefit of domesticated plants or animals. In the Early Neolithic, the appearance of ceramics and domesticates is paralleled by long-distance exchange in obsidian and probably other prestige materials, perhaps as a way of maintaining ethnic or kin connections in increasingly sedentary societies.

During the Middle Neolithic, expanding village settlements are accompanied by evidence for social differentiation in burial treatment and access to material resources. By the Late Neolithic, a fully agricultural economy was in place, and the elaboration of burial monuments and megaliths illustrates the participation of Sardinia and Corsica in a wider western Mediterranean phenomenon. The precocious use of metal, locally produced, is further evidence of developing social competition.

From the earliest settlement of Sardinia and Corsica, Stone Age societies there were neither isolated from surrounding cultural entities, nor unitary in their spatio-temporal characteristics. Important relationships with the mainland, and although dynamic and variable, were maintained throughout the Neolithic. Just as Sardinia is now recognized as having been an important part of Bronze Age Mediterranean cultural networks, it should be recognized that Sardinia and Corsica belonged to the main stream of Stone Age prehistory as well.