The exceptional discovery of a Neanderthal milk tooth near Saintes (Charente-Maritime)

During an excavation campaign carried out in Charente-Maritime, as every year since 2013, on the site of “La Roche à Pierrot”, in Saint-Césaire, not far from Saintes, a team of archaeologists discovered what the We don’t find every day, far from it: a Neanderthal tooth. Only ten have been discovered in the world. Even more surprising, it was found where we did not think it would be possible to make such a discovery: in an area where Neanderthals were butchers or meat-dryers. A tooth that will be able to reveal many things, such as the state of health of this child aged 6 to 8 years old, for example, but also determine the way in which he used his incisor.

Isabelle Crèvecoeur is a Paleoanthropologist, Director of Research at the CNRS and associated researcher at the University of Bordeaux, specializing in recent periods of prehistory in Africa and Europe.

She works on the questions of phenotypic diversity, behavior and the diffusion of modern humans in Africa at the end of the Late Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene. His work also focuses on the study of the biological and behavioral variability of Neanderthals, and the diversity of their funerary practices.

Isabelle Crèvecoeur coordinated the Collective Research Project (PCR – 2022-2024) “La Roche à Pierrot” (Excavation and study of ancient collections from the archaeological site of RPB, Saint-Césaire)