Since the 1980s, the theories related to the emergence of agropastoral economies in Europe have witnessed a significant evolution. During the 1970s, researchers pursued a hypothesis of independent processes of Neolithization that might explain the variability seen in the European Neolithic. In other terms, this allowed them to consider the introduction of production processes as a natural phenomenon, induced by “global change” at the end of the Pleistocene. For many reasons developed below, this framework of investigation is now obsolete, and partisans of a polygenic model have become rarer (Olaria 1988). We must effectively agree with the idea that there is no explicit tendency through the Holocene hunting economies in western Europe to move toward more and more production. If we consider the entire Mediterranean area, we must note that true Neolithization processes are largely confined to the Near East.

In consequence, this chapter will focus on the different processes of interaction between Mesolithic and Neolithic groups in southern France and northern Italy (Fig. 5.1). These phenomena are the consequence of the spread of the Near Eastern Neolithic. Theoretically speaking, this spread goes through significant transformation along the way and these modifications are not at all clear. Several important themes come out in this examination.