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Grotte des Espélugues

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Site type:
Cave
Site function:
Habitation site
Lat/Long:
43.09, -0.06
Country:
France
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The cave of Espélugues is located on the territory of the commune of Lourdes, in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in the Occitanie region, France.

It has been occupied since the Upper Paleolithic. According to Clot and Omnès, it is the first recognized Magdalenian deposit.

The Teilhac collection includes lithic tools, decorated half-round chopsticks, one with excised scrolls in champlevé (Pyrenean style), and a reindeer's head carved in reindeer antlers. This head was published as that of a horse in 1892, and Piette cites it as a stylized ibex. Ladier, who finds it at the Natural History Museum of Montauban in a batch of material from the shelters of the castle of Bruniquel, identifies it as a propellant fragment.

Léon Nelli finds an engraved limestone plate depicting a bear (dimensions 17.5 × 12.1 × 4.7 cm) and another schist depicting a bear's head (dimensions 13.2 × 8.3 × 1.2 cm)13.

A bone carving depicts a trout or salmonid; the bone is pierced with a hole.