Origins and Spread of Agriculture in Italy: A Nonmetric Dental Analysis A. Coppa, 1 * A. Cucina, 1,2 M. Lucci, 1 D. Mancinelli, 3 and R. Vargiu 1 1 Department of Human and Animal Biology, University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza,’’ 00185 Rome, Italy 2 Facultad de Ciencas Antropo ´logicas, Universidad Auto ´noma de Yucata ´n, Me ´rida 97305, Me ´xico 3 Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy KEY WORDS dental morphology; biological affinities; Paleo-Mesolithic; Neolithic; Italy ABSTRACT Dental morphological traits were employ- ed in this study as direct indicators of biological affin- ities among the populations that inhabited the Italian peninsula from the Upper Paleolithic-Mesolithic to Medi- eval times. Our analysis aims at contributing to the ongoing debate regarding the origin and spread of agri- culture in the peninsula by contrasting the dental evi- dence of archaeological and modern molecular samples. It is not possible to generalize given the complex and dynamic nature of these populations. However, the results from the principal component analysis, maximum likelihood, mean measure of divergence, and multidi- mensional scaling do indicate a net separation of the Paleo-Mesolithic sample from the other groups that is not related to dental reduction. This suggests that the shift in dental morphology was the product of Neolithic populations migrating into the peninsula from other areas. Nonetheless, the Paleo-Mesolithic populations share several discriminative traits with the Neolithic group. The biological relevance of such evidence suggests that, to some minor extent, the spread of agriculture did not occur by total population replacement. Because of re- gional small sample sizes, this hypothesis cannot be tested on a micro-regional scale. It is, however, feasible to depict a scenario where processes of genetic mixture or replacement probably took place at different rates on a macro-regional level. Am J Phys Anthropol 133:918– 930, 2007. V V C 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. The transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture is one of the most important issues in European human prehistory. The ‘‘Neolithic Revolution’’ led to profound changes in the cultural, demographic, and economic set- tings of populations (Childe, 1928; Binford, 1968; Ucko and Dimbley, 1969; Zohary and Hopf, 1988; Welsey- Cowan and Watson, 1992; Cauvin, 1994; Guilaine, 2000a,b). In Europe, the hunting-gathering economy that had characterized the continent until the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic was replaced, in some places quite rapidly, by agropastoral and intensive agriculture production systems (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1971, 1973; Harris, 1996; Thomas, 1996; Whittle, 1996; Guilaine, 2003; Mazurie ´ De Keroualin, 2003). Several models that are based on genetic, linguistic, and archaeo- logical data have been hypothesised to explain the tran- sition to agriculture in Neolithic Europe (Ammerman and Cavalli Sforza, 1971, 1973, 1984; Zvelebil, 1986; Renfrew, 1989, 1992, 1996; Sokal et al., 1991, 1993; Barbujani et al., 1994, 1998; Zvelebil and Lillie, 2000; Guilaine, 2000b, 2003; Mazurie ´ De Keroualin, 2001, 2003; Relethford, 2002). During recent decades, much research has been car- ried which has added a great deal of information to the subject. Archaeological, anthropological, chemical, and linguistic research has revealed a great deal regarding on the how and where of the transition (Jacobs, 1993; Lubell et al., 1994; Jackes et al., 1997; Price, 2000a; Bell- wood, 2001; Price et al., 2001; Bentley et al., 2002, 2003; Richards, 2003). In particular, it has shown that the introduction of farming in Europe resulted from both the adoption of agriculture by local hunter-gatherers and the process of colonization by farmers migrating into the continent (Price, 2000b). Overall, the process does not appear to have been homogeneous throughout the conti- nent. In fact, the general picture seems to be composed by a series of fragmented events (Tringham, 2000). On smaller scale, the same process might have also occurred on the Italian peninsula (Bagolini, 1992; Cipol- loni Sampo `, 1992; Grifoni Cremonesi, 1992). Certainly, at a time when changing cultural dynamics were influ- encing an entire region, questions remain. i) Did the changes come as part of, or as a consequence of, a dras- tic population movement and replacement that brought the new culture into the peninsula? ii) Did these changes occur in response to locally evolving populations or are there other explanations that have yet to be considered? There is ever increasing evidence which indicates much more complex population dynamics during the Meso- lithic–Neolithic transition in Europe compared to the previous simple idea of colonization versus adoption. This makes the study of the human skeletal data as a crucial help to understand how the Neolithic economy entered the Italian peninsula. Biological, especially dental nonmetric, data has rarely been used to assess these models. In this article, an analysis of dental nonmetric traits is used to examine Grant sponsors: C.N.R. Progetto Finalizzato ‘‘Beni Culturali’’, Ateneo 60% University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza’’; MIUR COFIN05. *Correspondence to: Alfredo Coppa, Dipartimento di Biologia Ani- male e dell’Uomo, Universita ` di Roma ‘‘La Sapienza,’’ P.le Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy. E-mail: alfredo.coppa@uniroma1.it Received 14 April 2006; accepted 19 February 2007 DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20620 Published online 23 April 2007 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). V V C 2007 WILEY-LISS, INC. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 133:918–930 (2007)