Caves of Arcy-sur-Cure

About

The caves of Arcy-sur-Cure are located in the commune of Arcy-sur-Cure in the department of Yonne in Burgundy-Franche-Comté, France. Most houses prehistoric archaeological sites and some are caves decorated with parietal art. It is one of the few archaeological deposits of the Paris Basin whose multiple strata cover a very extensive chronology, from the very ancient Mousterian (Medium Paleolithic, more than 200,000 years BC) to the final Paleolithic and to the Middle Ages.

The wealth of remains, both lithic, of fauna, bone industries and anthropological remains, as well as parietal art, offer a rare context in archaeology and allow an interdisciplinary and diachronic approach to research. It is also, through the Renne cave in particular, an exceptional place and the reference place to study the extinction of Homo neanderthalensis and the expansion of Homo sapiens. The Arcy site is an essential place for the study of Middle and Upper Paleolithic in the North of France.

The parietal paintings, the oldest currently known in France after those of the Chauvet cave, were discovered in 1990 in the Grande...