01EngisSectionThe CavesSchmerling excavated a fossil skull here in 1829 that was the first Neanderthal ever found, three decades before the Neander valley named the species and a century before anyone recognised what it was.
02SpySectionThe CavesThe 1886 excavation produced skeletons that settled the argument, and it did so because the excavators recorded which layer they came from.
03GoyetSectionThe CavesA large cave system dug from the 1860s whose material is still being re-examined with methods nobody then imagined.
04Trou Al'WesseSectionThe CavesA site worked by modern campaigns to modern standards, which is what makes it useful for checking the old ones.
05ChaleuxSectionThe CavesOne of Dupont's Lesse valley caves, dug fast and in quantity.
06RamioulSectionThe CavesFound in 1911 by a local society, in quarried limestone country on the edge of an industrial valley.
01Depth is timeSectionStratigraphyThe principle the whole discipline rests on: what is lower was deposited earlier, unless something disturbed it.
02Cave loam and the limestone floorSectionStratigraphyCave fill is not soil; it is a slow accumulation of washed-in sediment, roof fall and occupation debris sitting on bedrock.
03Modern disturbanceSectionStratigraphyQuarrying, earlier digging and animal burrowing all move material, and reading a section means spotting where that happened.
01The Levallois coreSectionThe FlintThe core is shaped first and the flake is struck last, which means the toolmaker had the finished shape in mind before the first blow.
02Striking and platformSectionThe FlintWhere you hit it and at what angle decides what comes off, and the scars left behind record the order of the blows.
03Blades and the Upper PalaeolithicSectionThe FlintLong narrow blades struck from a prepared core are a different production system, and they arrive with a different population.
01The first NeanderthalSectionThe FindsExcavated in 1829 and not recognised for a century — the record shows the evidence arriving long before anyone had a category to put it in.
02Fauna and environmentSectionThe FindsReindeer, horse and mammoth in the same deposits describe a climate, which is often the most useful thing a layer contains.
01Philippe-Charles SchmerlingSectionThe ExcavatorsHe dug the Meuse caves in the 1820s and 1830s and published what he found, decades before the framework existed to explain it.
02Édouard DupontSectionThe ExcavatorsHe cleared cave after cave in the Lesse valley from the 1860s, at speed and in quantity, for a national collection.
03De Puydt and LohestSectionThe ExcavatorsAt Spy in 1886 they recorded the layer each find came from, which is why their excavation settled an argument that earlier ones could not.
04Julien FraipontSectionThe ExcavatorsHe described the Spy material anatomically, and his account is what turned the finds into an argument the field could not ignore.
01Radiocarbon on the Spy remainsSectionDatingDirect dating of material excavated in 1886 has repeatedly revised what the site is understood to show, including which finds belong together.
02Revised attributionsSectionDatingMaterial dug in the nineteenth century has been reassigned more than once, which is an argument for keeping everything and labelling it well.