Lazaret Cave Shelter

The Grotte du Lazaret is a cave in the eastern suburbs of Nice, France, overlooking the Mediterranean. Layers excavated in the 1970s, belonging to marine isotope stage 6 (about 186,000 to 127,000 years ago), contain what Henry de Lumley interpreted as the remains of a shelter built inside the cave. It is one of a small number of Middle Pleistocene sites put forward as evidence of a roofed structure.

The proposed shelter

The occupation area measured about 11 by 3.5 m (36 by 11 ft). The cave wall closed it on three sides, and a winding line of large stones formed the fourth. De Lumley suggested the stones were packing that held upright the poles of a tent of animal skins leaning against the rock. No poles or hides would survive, so the reconstruction rests on the stones and on how debris was spread:

• stone flakes and bone spill outward through two gaps in the stone line, which may mark entrances;
• two circular concentrations of charcoal with burnt bone are probably hearths;
• tiny marine shells around the hearths may come from seaweed brought in as bedding, hinting at an inner living area and an outer zone under the same cover.

Who lived there

Cranial fragments of a child about nine years old, roughly 200,000 years old, have been assigned to Homo heidelbergensis or an early Neanderthal. More than 20,000 fragments of animal bone have been recovered, along with Acheulean stone tools found near the mouth of the cave along one wall. The Laboratoire de Préhistoire du Lazaret, close to the cave, continues to study the material.

Caveats

The stone line could also have formed by natural processes, and other proposed early shelters, such as La Baume Bonne and Orgnac cave in France, have weaker evidence still. Evidence for built housing before about 50,000 years ago is generally slim, partly because light structures leave few traces.

Significance for roofing history

If the interpretation is right, the Lazaret shelter shows early humans adding a light hide roof to a natural overhang rather than building a free-standing hut. Combining a rock shelter with a lean-to cover remained common in many later periods.