Summary. Until twenty years ago the chronology of the Neolithic and Copper INTRODUCTIONOur knowledge of the Neolithic and Copper Age settlement of Northern Italy has increased during the last twenty years largely due to the reexamination of the assemblages stored in national and local museums and to the excavation of some of the more important sites. Nevertheless, relatively little attention has been paid to the radiocarbon dating of the archaeological cultures of this region even though several articles have been devoted to this problem (Broglio 1972;Barfield 1974;Renfrew and Whitehouse 1974;Whitehouse 1978;Bagolini et al. 1979;Biagi 1980; Alessio et al. 1983; Sargent 1984; Bagolini and Biagi 1986;1987a;Allegri et al. 1987). THE CULTURAL/CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCEThe presence of Mesolithic hunter/gatherers in Northern Italy has been known since 1961 (Radmilli 1983) along the coast of the Trieste Gulf (Cannarella and Cremonesi 1967). At the end of the sixties some sites were accidentally discovered in the Adige Valley around Trento. Since then programmed surveys have been carried out in the central eastern Alpine arch and along the northern Apennine watershed between Tuscany and Liguria, where dozens of Mesolithic camps have been discovered and partly excavated Bagolini et al. 1983;Baffico et al. 1983) . The most complete series known so far are those of Grotta Benussi in the Trieste Karst (Cremonesi 1978-81)

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L’auteur propose un modèle pour le peuplement d’une zone des Alpes centrales, la Vallée de l’Adige, au Tardiglaciaire et à l’Holocène jusqu’à l’introduction de l’agriculture.Cette vallée est, en l’état actuel, la mieux documentée du versant italien des Alpes.Dans ce modèle, l’accent est mis surtout sur la distribution géographique et les conditions écologiques ambiantes des divers stades culturels du Paléolithique tardif jusqu’au premier Néolithique. Cette distribution fournit des informations utiles sur les processus socio-économiques qui caractérisent ces phénomènes.