Understanding Prehistory at the museum

Traveling through prehistory 

The permanent route begins with the sequence of the main periods of the Paleolithic, middle and recent, preserved in the sedimentary archives from Solutré. The prehistoric occupation of the Grand Site dates back to the last Neanderthals, leaving behind them the remains of the camp in the open air of Solutré Village and under the shelters of La Roche de Vergisson. This is where a series of Neanderthal human remains exceptional, presented here exclusively.

In Solutré, it all began with the discovery of laurel leaves, leafy tips found in abundance on the site, which made it possible to establish in the 19th century the characteristics of the Solutrean, culture and period of the Last Glacial Maximum. Admire the variations in the shape of the points in os or  flint over a long time recalling the important place of this activity in favor of hunting, a visible part of numerous practices including gathering, trapping of small animals or birds... These bone points armed assegais, projected using thrusters.

Discover wildlife and environments

The stroll then reveals the remains of animals found, illustrating the richness of the biodiversity vanished landscapes and their procession of glacial mammals. Discover reindeer, bison, large deer, horses, mammoths and predators such as wolves, bears and foxes, whose place was the roost. Then, the stone and bone tools allow us to evoke the everyday life. Admire the stone and antler strikers for the size of the flint, tools dedicated to working hides, tanning or cutting them, shaping hard materials (wood, bone, stone), drilling bone needle eyes or shellfish used as ornaments. Discover how, according to climate variations, vegetation adapts and evolves.

Experience Prehistory

 models educational information shows the state of knowledge on the site. The life of nomads of Prehistory seems to come to life before your eyes in a unique experience of learning and sensations. Imagine…a hunting site frequented during the seasonal movements of herds large herbivores, between plains and mountains… hunters in ambush pushing them against the side of the rock during episodes of hunting to the strategy developed. Experience the excitement of the hunt, listen to the roar of the gallop of horses and their whinnies tearing apart the moan of the wind, smell the odor of the dust raised by their rapid hooves!

After the hunt, the exploitation of the carcasses occupies all the members of the WITHIN GROUP : experienced old people, nursing women, men and children. Butchering, butchery, recovery of useful soft tissues skin, tongue, intestines, tendons occupy each. THE leather dries in the sun, planted on wooden stakes stuck in the ground before being scraped and tanned. The fillets of meat taken are smoked in large hearths where bone burns. The acrid smell and black smoke fill the bivouac of tents. Behind the camp, a scavenging wolf waits its turn...

Admire prehistoric art

The Solutré Prehistory Museum reveals many other treasures. Since 1866, excavators have discovered numerous bone remains decorated with notches and rhythmic marks. Admire drilled or grooved teeth, elements of necklace or decoration of elaborate clothing, lost millennia ago. Sometimes they are pearls ofivory, bear tooth worked for its suspension or ivory plaque engraved with a to rounded geometric. For 40 years, human communities have displayed a universe of signs and symbols : headless figurines of reindeer carved from chanel pebbles, heads of deer without bodies, slate tablets engraved with horses or a pattern abstract intersecting lines.

Two masterpieces unique will dazzle you: a small figurine of mammoth headless Solutrean, discovered in 1973, and the reindeer in profile appearing to run since the Magdalenian, more than 15 years ago, discovered in 000 in survey I1988.

Let yourself be told the adventure of Prehistory

The Solutré site is among the first prehistoric deposits explored in France from the 1860s. The discoveries, but also the mistakes and errors of interpretation of the pioneers, contributed to writing the history of prehistory. They forged their chronological markers with the creation of Solutrean in 1869 and 1872. The site also testifies to the evolution of research methods in prehistoric archeology.

Initially focused on the discovery of objects for the collection and their emblematic value (master fossil), the recherches gradually took into account the importance of their stratigraphic position. The place of the objects within the stacking of sediment levels allows us to read the chronology occupations and to order the evolution of material witnesses abandoned by man (1872-1889). These stratigraphic data precise results led, in 1907, to the revision of the Paleolithic timeline during a scientific controversy called the battle of the Aurignacian (1906-1912).
In the same way, repeating an old error of interpretation of the first excavators, the research of the years 1923-1928 aimed to discover burials prehistoric. They will be invalidated in 1973 by the dating carbon 14 of a skeleton, dating from Late Antiquity.

The resumption of research from 1968 to 1998, under the direction of Jean Combier, then Jack Hoffman et Anta Montet-White, contributes to a better understanding of the formation of the deposit within the slope scree. It clarifies the chronological framework of occupations by dating and delivers data paleo-environmental precise thanks, in particular, to palynological analysis and the study of the remains of micro-mammals.