Höhle von Cotencher, Prehistoric cave in Rochefort, Switzerland

The Höhle von Cotencher is a cave 18 m long with about 200 m² of floor and a maximum height of 5 m, opening on the northern side of the Areuse Gorge at 660 m, 130 m above the river, in the municipality of Rochefort. Its rounded form suggests a cavity hollowed by water seeping through the rock; before excavation it was almost filled with sediment, leaving only a cramped crawl-in under the porch.

The cave came to light in 1867 and quickly proved to be one of the earliest known places where people stayed in Switzerland. Subsequent excavations revealed tools and remains that showed humans visited this area repeatedly over an extremely long span of time.

The cave's name comes from the Cotencher locality, not the Areuse. It was mentioned as early as 1523, and a late-medieval counterfeiters' workshop was found inside. Today the site is shown only on guided tours from June to September, while finds are displayed at the Laténium in Hauterive and the Musée de l'Areuse in Boudry.

The cave reopened to the public in 2018 after recent work and can be visited from June to September only, on guided tours led by an expert guide. Before the excavations the cavity was almost filled with sediment, and entry was possible only by crawling through a narrow gap under the porch.

In 1964 a human upper jaw was found in the cave, the only human fossil from the site; the 1916-1918 digs by Auguste Dubois and Hans Georg Stehlin instead yielded about 416 stone tools and bones of at least 64 animal species, from cave bear to woolly rhinoceros.