The authors present a new, two-stage model of the spread of farming along the eastern Adriatic coast based on the first appearance of pottery. The initial stage was a very rapid dispersal, perhaps by ‘leapfrog colonisation’, associated with cave sites in southern Dalmatia. The second stage was a slower agropastoral expansion associated with cave and open-air sites along the northern coast. Migration was a significant factor in the process. The mountainous hinterland formed an agricultural frontier zone, where farming was adopted piecemeal by indigenous groups.

New radiocarbon determinations from Mesolithic, Neolithic, and/or Copper Age contexts at ten sites are presented, bringing the number of absolute dates available for the East Adriatic to more than twice that of a decade ago. The dates show that, from 6000 BC onward, pottery styles (Impressed Ware, Danilo variants, Hvar, Nakovana, and Cetina) emerged, spread, and disappeared at different times, places, and rates within the region. The implications for models of the spread of farming and other features of Neolithic life are discussed. The continued usefulness of the threefold division of the regional Neolithic into ‘Early’, ‘Middle’, and ‘Late’ phases is found to be dubious.

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A large and complex lithic collection from Pelješac, a peninsula on the eastern Adriatic seaboard of southern Croatia, provides extensive information about raw materials, formal typology, and technology of flaked stone artifacts from the Early Neolithic up to the Iron Age. Most of the evidence comes from two stratified sites: a cave named Spila and the hillfort of Grad, both located on the Nakovana Plateau. The most conspicuous characteristic of the Nakovana lithic collection is continuity, both in production technology and in the choice of raw material. Changes are manifest in frequencies of lithic artifact classes, rather than in kinds of lithic artifacts. Virtually all the lithics are made of cherts imported from the Gargano Peninsula, which testifies to persistent trans-Adriatic connections throughout post-Mesolithic prehistory. Prismatic blades were brought to Nakovana as finished products. They are present from the Early Neolithic, their frequencies peak during the Copper Age, and they disappear from the record soon after the transition to the Bronze Age. An ad hoc flake-production technology is present throughout the sequence, but its importance diminishes as the prismatic blade technology takes over. After the disappearance of prismatic blades, Bronze Age lithic assemblages consist mainly of flakes and expedient flake-based tools. While the Nakovana sites did not yield any Mesolithic finds, comparison with other eastern Adriatic sites indicates that raw material procurement patterns changed radically at the time of the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, which also coincided with the introduction of prismatic blade technology.