Gisement préhistorique du Pataud
MonumentHidden Treasure
At the heart of Les Eyzies, the Pataud site reveals 20,000 years of Aurignacian and Perigordian occupation in an exceptional rock shelter, a veritable open book on prehistoric humanity.
History
Nestling at the foot of the golden limestone cliffs of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, the world capital of prehistory, the Pataud shelter is one of the best stratified Palaeolithic sites ever excavated in Europe. Systematically discovered and explored in the second half of the 20th century, the site has a remarkable stratigraphy covering almost fifteen successive levels of occupation, ranging from the Early Perigordian to the Late Alderignacian, providing a window onto some twenty millennia of human life. What sets Pataud apart from so many other sites in the Vézère valley is the surgical precision with which its archaeological layers have been documented, offering researchers an almost uninterrupted chronology of the presence of Homo sapiens in the Upper Palaeolithic. Bone remains, carved flint tools, ivory and shell ornaments and a remarkable sculpted bas-relief depicting an ibex bear witness to the spiritual and technical wealth of these hunter-gatherer communities. Visiting the museum and the site itself is a rare experience of sensory purification: you are literally plunged into the bowels of time, accompanied by a guide who recreates the heat of the hearths, the sound of splintering flint and the precise movements of prehistoric craftsmen. Faithful reconstructions and carefully illuminated display cases provide an insight into daily life, reindeer and wild horse hunting, and the burial practices of these peoples. The geological setting itself contributes to the show: the sub-rock shelter, formed by the differential erosion of coniacian limestone, offers that special acoustic, that play of low-angled light that the Magdalenians and Perigordians must have felt like we do. All around the site, the Vézère valley meanders between cliffs and forests, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
Architecture
The Pataud shelter is a natural rock shelter carved out of the Upper Cretaceous coniacian limestone cliffs in the Vézère valley by water and chemical erosion. This type of geological formation, which is ubiquitous in the Périgord region, provided prehistoric populations with a semi-covered habitat that was both protected from the elements and had a favourable exposure - here facing south-east - optimising sunlight and passive heat. The cavity, around fifteen metres deep and with a frontage around twenty-five metres wide, extends over two distinct levels, which facilitated the exceptional sedimentary accumulation observed by the excavators. The stratigraphic fill, in places more than eight metres thick, is made up of aeolian silts, limestone scree, hearth ash and pruning waste, forming a natural archive that the archaeologists deciphered layer by layer. Today, the site is protected and presented in a discreet museum building, designed to preserve the remains while allowing them to be viewed by the public. A stratigraphic section visible on the wall forms the centrepiece of the scenography: it is a striking representation of the accumulated time, with each coloured band representing thousands of years of human history condensed into a few metres of sediment.
Related Figures
Hallam L. Movius Jr. — préhistorien américain de l'Université Harvard, directeur des fouilles fondatrices de 1958 à 1964Denis Peyrony — préhistorien et conservateur des Eyzies, pionnier de l'archéologie paléolithique en PérigordÉdouard Lartet — naturaliste et paléontologue, initiateur des grandes fouilles préhistoriques de la vallée de la Vézère au XIXe siècleGabriel de Mortillet — archéologue qui a établi la classification du Paléolithique supérieur, donnant un cadre à la compréhension des sites comme le PataudAndré Leroi-Gourhan — préhistorien français dont les travaux sur l'art et les techniques paléolithiques éclairent les découvertes du Pataud
