ABSTRACT
Following a multidisciplinary approach the Saharan archaeology uses palaeoenvironmental data to explain changes in societies. At the end of Pleistocene such changes were manifested through innovative elements in technology (ceramics, particular lithic manufactures, ornaments), in settlement patterns (increased sedentariness) and in the relationships with wild species (pre-domestication). The environmental trend in the studies on Saharan civilizations has tended -even more-to relate such transformations to those undergone by the environment. Such tendency received its impetus in the 1960’s,parallel to the flourishing of the functionalist -processual school in American Anthropology, eventhough its reference to such framework has hardly ever been rendered explicit by various authors as a theoretical model or a consciously shared paradigm.
