Take part in a conference led by Jean-Pierre Chadelle, archaeologist, associate researcher at UMR 5199 PACE, Bordeaux.
“To locate the beginning of prehistoric research in Les Eyzies, we must go back to August 1863 when Édouard Lartet and Henry Christy got off the train at Les Eyzies station. The first is one of the best European specialists of the bones of disappeared animals, the second flint tools and civilizations without writing that are contemporary to them. They will excavate in Les Eyzies the first deposits: cave Richard, Gorge d'Enfer, Laugerie-Basse, Laugerie-Haute then, on the neighboring communes, the Moustier and La Madeleine.
Their research, published from 1865 to 1875 in the 600 pages of Reliquiae Aquitanicae, immediately had global repercussions and definitively changed the perception of prehistoric man.
In 1868, Les Eyzies is again on the front page of prehistoric news with the fortuitous discovery of the skeletons of the Cro-Magnon shelter and the first rescue excavation carried out by Louis Lartet. His observations, immediately published in the Reliquiae, together with the studies of the best specialists of the time, Broca and De Quatrefage, were also of international importance.
After these giants, the Eyzies opened the era of collectors, skimmers of deposits, until the State put an end to it at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the action of Denis Peyrony.”