Grotte de Coupe-Gorge, Prehistoric cave in Montmaurin, France.
Grotte de Coupe-Gorge is a cave 25 m long and 9 m wide in the Seygouade gorges, with a 7 m high archaeological fill accumulated over 400,000 years. Its ceiling has an upward chimney blocked by a breccia of bones and worked quartzites. The site lies at an intermediate level, directly below the Grotte Boule.
Quarrying at the Miro quarry exposed the cave just after World War II; on 21 September 1945 Henri Breuil and Henri Begouën visited and entrusted excavations to Louis Méroc, who dug from 1946 to 1961. Méroc divided the 7 m fill into five layers, later splitting layer 3 into nine sub-layers R to Z. Claire Gaillard defended her doctoral thesis on the cave's lithic industry in 1979, and Amélie Vialet's team resumed research in 2017.
The cave's name, Coupe-Gorge, means "cut-throat" in French, a toponym shared with the narrow Seygouade gorge where the Montmaurin caves open in a vertical limestone wall. The site lies at the intermediate level, directly below the Boule cave and level with the Niche, where Raoul Cammas found the Montmaurin mandible in 1949. Visitors can look for the ascending chimney in the ceiling, blocked by a breccia of mixed bones and knapped quartzites.
The cave can be reached on foot via walking paths through the gorge, though access varies depending on current research activities at the site. It is wise to check in advance about visiting conditions since excavations may limit when the area is open to the public.
The cave's ceiling holds an ascending shaft blocked by a breccia packed with mixed bones and knapped quartzite. Through this opening, material from a Mousterian deposit above—probably the Boule cave, 15 m higher—fell into Coupe-Gorge during the Upper Paleolithic. Louis Méroc noted in 1948 that the cave had four openings, the last to the north still blocked by sediment.
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