The Liguride units of southern Italy represent the remnants of a subduction complex including Mesozoic to Paleogene rocks from the Neotethyan oceanic domain. In southern Lucania, a tectonic contact separates relatively high-pressure (blueschist-facies) rocks in the hanging wall from low-pressure (unmetamorphosed) Liguride rocks in the footwall. Complex deformation and polyphase metamorphism record both underplating and subsequent exhumation of the hanging wall unit. Structural, petrological and biostratigraphic evidence suggest that exhumation of high-pressure rocks occurred during early Miocene overthrusting of the Liguride accretionary wedge onto the southern continental margin of Neotethys, and was most probably strongly controlled by the inherited architecture of the rifted continental margin.