Édouard Lartet, financed and helped by the Englishman
Henry Christy, were the first systematic excavators of the site, starting in 1863, and published their findings in 1875 under the name of the
Age of the Reindeer ("L'âge du renne"). Objects that were found at the
la Madeleine site are distributed among a number of museums, including the
Muséum de Toulouse, the
Musee des Antiquites Nationales,
St. Germain-en-Laye and the
British Museum. Artifacts excavated from the site include: • The
Bison Licking Insect Bite, a
20,000 year old carving (15,000
BP according to the National Museum of Prehistory) of exceptional artistic quality. • A perforated baton with low relief horse aka.
Baton fragment (Palart 310). • An engraved bone rod that depicts, according to
Timothy Taylor (1996), a
lioness licking the opening of either a gigantic
human penis or a
vulva. ==Conservation==