The site of Bau de l'Aubesier was excavated in 1901. After a period of latency between 1964 and 1987, archaeologists, as part of a Franco-Canadian and international project, resumed their excavations under the direction of Serge Lebel of the Université du Québec à Montréal. The last campaign in 2006 highlighted the presence of Neanderthals and pre-Neanderthals.

Successive excavations have yielded remains of the Mousterian lithic industry and numerous remains of herbivores dominated by aurochs (43-53%) and horses (31-35%). It is the highest European concentration of the latter, moreover, the presence of reindeer, still rare east of the Rhône, "indicate that Provence constituted a particular biogeographical entity during the Middle Pleistocene".

Forest species ranged from pine, still dominant, to fir and juniper, followed by deciduous trees: beech, alder, hazel, linden. As for the oak its presence was constant.

The use of fire in the cave has been highlighted (heated flint, vegetable coals, ash residues, burned bone and dental matter). The excavations yielded 2,869 bones and teeth as well as three pre-Neanderthal fossils. This is a major discovery that showed that they "possessed much more advanced social behaviors and technological skills than those known until today."