The University of Pisa holds a tradition of the utmost importance in the study of Prehistory and Protohistory, in Italy and abroad. Some of the most important names of the Italian Prehistoric Archaeology were trained and taught at the University of Pisa. Among these we can remember Antonio Maria Radmilli, academic of the Lincei and full professor since 1971 at our university, as well as director of the Institute of Human Anthropology and Paleontology and president of the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Protohistory; Giuliano Cremonesi, who from 1967 held the chair of Palaeoethnology at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, also acting as director of the Department of Archaeological Sciences (1985-1987) and then vice president of the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Protohistory (1991).

Over the last few decades, professor Carlo Tozzi, one of the leading researchers on the cultures of the Italian Paleolithic, and professors Renata Grifoni-Cremonesi and Giovanna Radi, both distinguished specialists of recent Prehistory, have taught and carried out their research at Pisa. The research conducted by the Department of Archaeological Sciences of Pisa has touched many fundamental topics of the Mediterranean Prehistory, from the transition between Neanderthals and Sapiens, to the adaptations of the last Epigravettian and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, up to the arrival of the first populations of farmers and their development during the Metal Ages.

Today, the prehistoric research at Pisa is structured around the section of Prehistory and Experimental Archaeology of the Department of Civilization and Forms of Knowledge. The researchers belonging to this section deal with very varied topics, both from a chronological and geographical point of view, although the end of the Palaeolithic and the advent of the first farming societies in the Mediterranean area is one of the main topics of prehistoric research at Pisa. The adopted methodological approach integrates the archaeometric study of the archaeological artefacts, of their context of production and use, with the geomorphological and paleoenvironmental reconstructions, through research in the field, in museums and in laboratory.

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