Abri de la Ferrassie

Savignac-de-Miremont

At the foot of a limestone cliff, in a small dry valley near the Vézère, La Ferrassie is one of the most important sites in the world for Neanderthal burials. The shelter was discovered in 1895 during road works, then excavated by Louis Capitan and Denis Peyrony. Between 1909 and 1921, they found there an elderly man, a woman, then above all children, a newborn and foetuses. Some bodies lay in pits. One foetus was accompanied by two scrapers and a stone point, and a child of about three years was covered with a limestone slab marked with small cup-marks. Another child, about two years old, discovered much later, was studied again in 2020: a pit had been dug to lay it in, and a bone was dated to about 41,000 years. That these gestures had a ritual meaning remains a hypothesis: a skeleton does not by itself prove a tomb, and the in-situ evidence disappeared in the early excavations. But the pits, the slab and the tools show care given to the dead more than forty thousand years ago.

French Ministry of Culture, Mérimée database — Gisement préhistorique de la Ferrassie ↗

Getting there: Guided tour of about one hour, by appointment only, all year except Saturdays and a few public holidays (Dordogne-Périgord tourist office page, 2026 season). Slots are booked through the Les Eyzies sites of the Centre des monuments nationaux. The deposit is listed as a historic monument: it cannot be visited outside this tour.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound