6000-3200 BC Neolithic

In southern Italy and Sicily the first farming communities were established from around 6000 BC when new crops and animals and the knowledge of how to farm them arrived by sea from the east. Further north and west the existing communities were slower to adapt novelties such as cultivated cereals. Some of the earliest sites in the south were open settlements, but others were enclosed by ditches, such as the 'villages' of the Taviolere plain in Apulia. Within an exterior ditch, smaller ditched enclosures were built around rectangular wooden houses. These sites seem to have housed village-sized communities who were exploiting fertile soils for growing their crops. The farming mode of life spread across Italy through the Neolithic, with many communities living in open settlements throughout the period.

From around 4000 BC, Neolithic communities in Italy, like many of their counterparts in other areas of Europe, began to bury their dead in communal tombs, rather than in individual graves. Megalithic tombs (made of large stones) were built, but rock-cut tombs were also used. Some of these burial sites, such as Laterza near Taranto, have produced many artefacts showing how rich the material culture was in these groups. Finely made decorated pottery was often placed in tombs, along with stone axes, beads, stone pendants and bone points.