Michel et les Ours...

Caves and bats: Morphological impacts and archaeological implications. The Azé Prehistoric Cave (Saône-et-Loire, France)

“…These have been found only at several locations beyond the flowstone barrier but none in the part open to the surface and accessible to bats. Biochronological dating of palaeontological deposits discovered beyond the barrier show that bears were present in this part of the cave in the middle of MIS 6, around 140-160 ka (Argant, 1988(Argant, , 1991. Since this period, there has been very limited retreat of the cave walls upstream of the barrier, since the bear claw marks there are perfectly visible.…”

“…From a palaeontological point of view, bears were present in the cave, between the Lower Palaeolithic and the end of the Middle Palaeolithic: 140 to 160 ka (Argant, 1988(Argant, , 1991(Argant, , 2004Argant et al, 2007).…”

“…Among the examples studied in this paper, the prehistoric cave at Azé (Mâconnais region, South Burgundy, France (Fig. 1)) stands out because: (i) it is a well-known cave which has been studied for a long time (Barriquand et al, 2011a(Barriquand et al, , 2011b; (ii) the conditions of its genesis and paleogeographic evolution have been the subject of numerous research projects (Barriquand et al, 2006(Barriquand et al, , 2012(Barriquand et al, , 2015aDubois et al, 2014); and (iii) both its entrance area and deeper zones have provided a large collection of high quality paleontological remains, which have helped us better understand the conditions in which these areas evolved (Argant, 1988(Argant, , 1991(Argant, , 2004Barriquand et al, 2004;Argant et al, 2007Argant et al, , 2019. Lastly, (iv) its entry zone has been a site of human occupations from the Lower Paleolithic to the 16 th century, providing a number of high-quality remains (Combier et al, 2000;Floss and Hoyer, 2010;Barriquand et al, 2011b).…”