Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The Laugerie-Haute shelter, located on the right bank of the Vézère valley at the Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil (Dordogne), has been one of the fifteen prehistoric UNESCO World Heritage sites since 1979. This exceptional deposit, excavated from 1863 and then in stages until 1939, revealed a continuous human occupation over about 20,000 years, from the Périgordien to the Magdalenian (24 000 to 15,000 years BP).

The excavations revealed abundant lithic tools, bone objects and furniture, confirming its importance as a prehistoric habitat. The shelter, 200 meters long, extends over 1000 m2 to the banks of the Vézère. Its archaeological layers attest to successive occupations during the Gravettien, the Solutrean and the Magdalenian.

Ranked Historic Monument in 1927 and 1941, the site is now accessible to the public with conference tours organized by the National Monuments Centre. He inspired the novelist Jean M. Auel for his novels Les Refuges de pierre and Le Pays des Grottes Sacrées, highlighting its cultural and scientific importance.

Discoveries include flint tools, reindeer wood engravings (such as a Magdalenian glutton), and carved lamps. The research, documented by archaeologists such as André Cheynier and Alain Roussot, has helped to reconstruct the ways of life of hunter-gatherers in the Upper Paleolithic region.

The shelter illustrates the evolution of prehistoric techniques and art, with an elaborate bone industry and blocks engraved in the upper layers. Its classification at UNESCO, along with other sites in the Vézère Valley, bears witness to its universal value in understanding Paleolithic societies.

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