INTRODUCTION

This monograph reports on excavations carried out in the Cave of Fontéchevade (Charente, France) in the Universities of Pennsylvania and Perpignan from 1994 through 1998. The site had been excavated sporadically since the late nineteenth century, but is best known from the work of Germaine Henri-Martin (1957) conducted from 1937 to 1954. In total, these earlier excavations uncovered a very small Châtelperronian assemblage, along with an Aurignacian and Mousterian, all of which overlay a deep set of beds with a Tayacian industry. Bronze Age burials and occupation beds were also uncovered near the back of the cave.

The site of Fontéchevade has figured prominently in the paleoanthropological literature for many years because of two principal discoveries made by Henri-Martin. The first was a portion of hominin frontal bone designated Fontéchevade I, which, because it lacked a supraorbital torus, appeared quite out of place for a specimen that was originally thought to date to the last interglacial. Taken together with Fontéchevade II, a partial calotte that displays a more archaic appearance, this specimen was used to argue for the existence of an independent presapiens line of more modern humans in Europe during the early Upper Pleistocene (Heberer 1951, 1955; Vallois 1958), an interpretation that conflicts with what is now known about the fossil record in France and the rest of Europe.