A brief history of the excavations in the Gatzarria cave

The video presenting the brief history of the Gatzarria cave, with Lars Anderson, is online on the Carnets de Fouilles YouTube channel.

“‘The archaeologist, Lars Anderson, presents the excavation site in the Gatzarria cave, located in the Arbailles massif in the Basque Country, in a geological context of the Lower Cretaceous. The cave has been studied since the 1950s, initially by Georges Laplace, who introduced a rigorous Cartesian excavation method. Despite methodological differences with other archaeologists such as François Bordes, Laplace excavated intensively until 1976, focusing in particular on the transition between the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. He proposed theories on leptolithisation, a process in which tools become thinner and longer. Since 2017, excavations have resumed under the direction of Marianne Deschamps, who has identified strata and layers of material that had previously been potentially misinterpreted. The current team relies on modern tools such as photogrammetry and digital surveys, while insisting on the importance of a critical understanding of the data provided by the machines. Fieldwork is based on a high level of coordination between team members, with detailed stripping sheets for each excavation sub-square, enabling the daily progress of the work to be monitored. Human discussion and interpretation remain essential, as the archaeological data must be carefully put into context to avoid errors in analysis due to secondary deposits or disturbances. Finally, the team is seeking to distinguish human contributions from natural processes in archaeological deposits, by posing precise hypotheses and using a methodical, long-term approach.’