The cave of Pech Merle (or Pech Merle) is a prehistoric decorated cave located in the department of Lot (Occitanie region, France), in the commune of Cabrerets. It opens into a hill (pech in Occitan) overlooking the valleys of the Sagne and Célé, in the Quercy.

This cave, like others, has been compared to the Sistine Chapel; this comparison is attributed to Father Breuil.

Traces of animal occupations are still visible: cobs and cave-bear claws. The complex has seven cavities, only two of which were frequented by prehistoric men. Apart from the paintings, the very floor of the cave has preserved the testimony of the passage of man: 12 footprints of a teenager in the bottom of a now dried gour were fossilized by calcification; 3 flint tools (chisel, blade and pebble) as well as some charcoal and debris of reindeer shoulder blades were found there. According to Michel Lorblanchet, the cave did not serve as a habitat, its attendance must have been episodic and not important.

At the end of the Würm glaciation, the natural entrance to the cave was filled by a landslide. The current entrance for the visit is through an artificial gallery dug in 1923.

Amédée Lemozi, author of the first study of the cave had estimated that all the figurations dated from the Aurignacian. Abbot Breuil classified the panel of horses punctuated in the Aurignacian or Périgordian and the black frieze at the beginning of the Magdalenian or at the end of the Périgordian. According to André Leroi-Gourhan, the Pech Merle brought together two successive sanctuaries, one centered around the drawings of the Combel and the other around the frieze of the horses punctuated. The horse on the right was the subject of a direct carbon-14 dating carried out by the Centre for Low Radioactivity in Gif-sur-Yvette. The result is 24,640 +- 390 years BP. This date corresponds to the Gravettian in southwestern France, which is consistent with other elements, including negative hands.

The work of Michel Lorblanchet led him to distinguish three artistic phases:

1. an archaic phase, represented by the Combel, the punctuated horses and the first digital tracks (around 25,000-24,000 BP)
2. an average phase, represented by the black frieze, all black figurations and human figures as well as other digital traces (indeterminate period)
3. a recent phase, represented by engravings (attached to the Magdalenian around 14,000-13,000 BP)

Analyses of pollen taken from the silt of the cave have also confirmed an episodic occupation in three successive passages separated by long periods of abandonment.