This monograph reports the results of new excavations at Fonté-chevade, one of the most important and best-known Paleolithic sites in Western Europe. The new excavations, which took place between 1994 and 1998, followed those of Germaine Henri-Martin, who worked there for many years during the middle part of the twentieth century. Although the meticulous reporting by Henri-Martin and her collaborators on the site's fossils and archaeological industries had a tremendous influence on the field of paleoanthropology, the new work has radically altered virtually every aspect of the earlier interpretations.

The Fontéchevade Cave, which is located near the town of Montbron in the southeastern part of the Department of the Charente, France, is a long, narrow, tunnel-like formation that extends back some 30 m from its north-facing mouth. When Henri-Martin started excavating in 1937, following relatively brief excavations by others since the turn of that century, the cave itself was almost completely full of sediment. However, after almost 20 years of work, with interruptions because of World War II, she had removed about 750 m3 of sediment. The main deposits of the site that were the focus of Henri-Martin's excavations were a relatively thick (up to 7 m) series of sediments that contained an industry called the Tayacian. These deposits preceded overlying industries of Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic, most of which had already been removed by the earlier excavations. The Tayacian deposits were subdivided on the basis of depth, rather than natural stratigraphy, into beds labeled E0 through E2′′′.