Radiocarbon dating of samples of charred cereal, biomolecularly confirmed sheep bone, human bone from burials, and diagnostic artifacts places the appearance of the ‘Neolithic package’ in Iberia ca. 5500 Cal BC. The earliest dates are statistically indistinguishable from Catalonia to Portugal and, whenever their archaeological context is secure, the associated pottery includes a significant, if not majority cardial-decorated component. These patterns are consistent with models of maritime pioneer colonization whereby the arrival of domesticates results from the dispersal of farming groups carrying the Cardial cultural tradition.

BackgroundThe archaeology of North Africa remains enigmatic, with questions of population continuity versus discontinuity taking centre-stage. Debates have focused on population transitions between the bearers of the Middle Palaeolithic Aterian industry and the later Upper Palaeolithic populations of the Maghreb, as well as between the late Pleistocene and Holocene.ResultsImproved resolution of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup U6 phylogeny, by the screening of 39 new complete sequences, has enabled us to infer a signal of moderate population expansion using Bayesian coalescent methods. To ascertain the time for this expansion, we applied both a mutation rate accounting for purifying selection and one with an internal calibration based on four approximate archaeological dates: the settlement of the Canary Islands, the settlement of Sardinia and its internal population re-expansion, and the split between haplogroups U5 and U6 around the time of the first modern human settlement of the Near East.ConclusionsA Bayesian skyline plot placed the main expansion in the time frame of the Late Pleistocene, around 20 ka, and spatial smoothing techniques suggested that the most probable geographic region for this demographic event was to the west of North Africa. A comparison with U6's European sister clade, U5, revealed a stronger population expansion at around this time in Europe. Also in contrast with U5, a weak signal of a recent population expansion in the last 5,000 years was observed in North Africa, pointing to a moderate impact of the late Neolithic on the local population size of the southern Mediterranean coast.

RESUMENEn este trabajo se presentan datos inéditos acerca de tres asentamientos al aire libre situados en el llano prelitoral del Penedès (Barcelona) con ocupaciones del Neolítico inicial: el hábitat de Les Guixeres de Vilobí y las agrupaciones de silos-fosas de La Serreta y el Mas d'en Boixos . Se estudian sus materiales cerámicos y 5 fechas radiocarbónicas inéditas en el marco de la discusión sobre el Neolítico antiguo del nordeste de la Península Ibérica y de la neolitización del Mediterráneo occidental . Se propone que esta zona fue clave y con cierta densidad poblacional durante las primeras fases neolíticas y comparable a enclaves emblemáticos como el cercano valle del Llobregat (Garraf-llano de Barcelona y Vallès) o la zona alicantina . La antigüedad de las fechas obtenidas aporta nuevos datos al debate acerca del primer neolítico en la Península Ibérica . ABSTRACT The work now presented puts forward new data on three open-air sites located in Penedès (Barcelona, Catalan Coastal Depression) with Early Neolithic occupation phases: the settlement of Les Guixeres de Vilobí and the pit complexes of La Serreta and Mas d'en