The beginning of the Neolithic in Andalusia

The Early Neolithic in Andalusia shows great complexity in the implantation of the new socioeconomic structures. Both the wide geophysical diversity of this territory and the nature of the empirical evidence available hinder providing a general overview of when and how the Mesolithic substrate populations influenced this process of transformation, and exactly what role they played. The absolute datings available and the studies on the archaeological materials are evaluated, so as to understand the diversity of the different zones undergoing the neolithisation process on a regional scale. The results indicate that its development, initiated in the middle of the 6th millennium BC and consolidated between 5500 and 4700 cal. BC, is parallel and related to the same changes documented in North Africa and the different areas of the Central-Western Mediterranean.