Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

Foissac Cave, located in the municipality of Aveyron (Occitanie), is an underground network of 11,000 metres discovered in 1959. It is distinguished by three entrances: the entrance "FFS" (access to paintings), the Trou qui Fume (seleological entrance), and an artificial tourist entrance. The cavity opens in Jurassic limestones and was built for the public in 1973 after the discovery of its extreme upstream in 1965.

The site contains a parietal art of the Upper Paleolithic, identified in 2006 in the room François Rouzaud (named in homage to the archaeologist who died on site in 1999). The works include non-figurative engravings, animal paintings (aurochs, bison, caprine), and red/black dots on stalactites to evoke anthropomorphic forms. A fragment of mammoth ivory and bones in the walls recall practices observed in the caves of Quercy or the Pyrenees. A bison phalange statuette, representing a female figure carrying a child or animal, was discovered there in 2014.

A recent neolithic site (circa 2700 B.C.), with burials, lithic tools, ceramics and traces of multiple passages, was delivered upstream of the cave. Excavations were conducted there from 1978 to 1988, when the site was classified as a historic monument. Between 2020 and 2022, an inventory campaign was used to date prehistoric occupations and to study the remains.

Medieval traces attest to an ephemeral mining operation: argilo-calcus trails, boreholes, and pottery weaving near the FFS entrance. This historic entrance, located at the bottom of a doline, was used to extract iron pisoliths. Prospecting, covered by a thin layer of calcite, confirms an ancient but time-limited mining activity.

The cave is now open to the public, offering a tour along the underground river. His study continues to reveal key elements on human occupations, from Prehistory to the Middle Ages, through contemporary speleological and archaeological uses.

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