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Chapter 2: Background

Pech de l'Azé's location Pech IV is an archaeological site in southern France. It is in the Périgord region along the road between the towns of Carsac and Sarlat. This site is one of several caves over a distance of 200 meters that occur in a limestone cliff face. The other nearby sites are Pech I and Pech II. 3D topographical map As archaeologists, we are interested in these caves because they contain a unique record of ancient behaviors. Cultural materials that are the residue of these activities are found in the natural sediments that have filled the caves over tens of thousands of years. (Read more about site taphonomy) Previous excavations at all three cave sites have shown us that there is a lengthy sequence of occupation documented by the cultural materials found in the different sediment layers. The occupation of Pech IV Most of this sequence dates to what we call the Middle Paleolithic Period (Read more about the Middle Paleolithic), when Neandertals inhabited Europe.

Excavation at Pech IV Since 2000, we have focused our archaeological project on the cave at Pech IV. This site was first tested in 1952 by the noted French prehistorian, François Bordes. François Bordes He only briefly examined the site because he was interested in simply finding out what types of cultural materials Pech IV contained. Between 1953 and 1956, an amateur archaeologist, B. Mortureux, who was a dentist by profession, excavated a long trench into the Pech IV sediments. This trench was oriented roughly North-South and ended when the limestone cliff face was encountered on the north side of the trench. François Bordes returned to Pech IV between 1970 and 1977 to extensively investigate its cultural deposits. He excavated units on either side of the trench dug by Mortureux and carefully recorded details about the sediments as well as about the stone artifacts and animal bones. His preliminary report on the results of the 1970-1973 excavations, published in 1976 (1), was the only readily accessible source of information about Pech IV until we began our project.


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