New data about the neolithisation of the territory of Albania

Abstract

Currently, nothing speaks to the presence of a Neolithic horizon in Albania without pottery. Nor has the pre-ceramic Early Neoithic been found along the eastern Adriatic shores of Dalmatia250, where the beginnings of the Neolithic are ccompanied by pottery in all the settlements. The hypothesis of the preceramic Neolithic proposed in Lepenski Vir251 and in Thessaly (Sesklo, Argissa)252 has been confirmed by studies in Lepenski Vir Ia-c (pre-ceramic) and Lepesnki Vir II (first appearance of pottery)253 and in Thessaly (Sesklo I: 6500 BC (cal) and Argissa I: 6350 BC (cal)254, while it has not been confirmed in the Peleponnese (Franchthi cave) and in Crete (Knossos)255. Meanwhile, the pre-ceramic Early Neolithic has been confirmed through systematic excavations in the primary neolithisation zone (Zone A) (which includes central Anatolia, the Levant, northern Syria and Mesapotamia, south-east Turkey and western Iran), where the Neolithic way of life begins as early as the eleventh millennium BC.(cal) (Neolithic pre-ceramic settlement in Körtiktepe)256, in central Turkey (Aşikli)257 and in the valley of the Euphrates river in the south-east (Akarçay Tepe), where the earliest appearance of pottery is dated to above 7000 BC. (cal)258, in the Near East (Jericho-Israel) where the early phase of the pre-ceramic phase of the Neolithic (PPNA) is dated to about 8500-7600 BC (cal) and its late phase (PPNB) to about 7600-6000 BC (cal), and in Ain Ghazal (Jordan), where a final phase of the pre-ceramic Neolithic has also been defined PPNC), dated to about 6200-
5900 BC (cal)259. According to the archaeological research in Albania, we can refer to three different models of the neolithisation process, related to the three different waves of the neolithisation in different regions of Albania, with chronological gaps in between each wave.