Abri de la Madeleine

Excavations

Édouard Lartet, financed and helped by the Englishman Henry Christy, were the first systematic excavators of the site, starting in 1863, and published their findings in 1875 under the name of the Age of the Reindeer ("L'âge du renne"). Objects that were found at the la Madeleine site are distributed among a number of museums, including the Muséum de Toulouse, the Musee des Antiquites Nationales, St. Germain-en-Laye and the British Museum.

Artifacts excavated from the site include:

• The Bison Licking Insect Bite, a 20,000 year old carving (15,000 BP according to the National Museum of Prehistory) of exceptional artistic quality.
• A perforated baton with low relief horse aka. Baton fragment (Palart 310).
• An engraved bone rod that depicts, according to Timothy Taylor (1996), a lioness licking the opening of either a gigantic human penis or a vulva.