The Fouilles archéologiques de La Madeleine, tucked beneath a limestone cliff above the Vézère River near Tursac, gave the world a new word. When Édouard Lartet and Henry Christy excavated here in 1863, they pulled flint tools, bone needles, engraved antlers and a remarkable ivory carving of a mammoth from the sediment.

That mammoth was proof, controversial at the time, that prehistoric humans had lived alongside species long extinct. From these finds, Gabriel de Mortillet named an entire era: the Magdalenian, roughly 17,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The site's layers don't stop at prehistory. A troglodyte village grew here in the Middle Ages, its cave-cut rooms offering refuge from Norman raids, and a chapel still stands on the clifftop.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the full arc of human occupation along the Vézère, connecting La Madeleine's engraved objects to the broader story of the valley's UNESCO-listed prehistoric sites.