Included in a limestone cliff of the Corbières Massif,[1] it overlooks several tens of meters (80 m today, less than 60 at the time of Tautavel Man) of wide valley where the Verdouble stream leaves a canyon to meander in this plain.

The highly contrasted relief of this environment produced several ecological niches that provided as many types of prey: animals adapted to the river (beavers).

The distant environment, less than a half-day walk (about 30 km), could provide other stones to make tools: flint (in Roquefort-des-Corbières), red jasper (in Corneilla-de-Conflent), cherts (in Rivesaltes), quartzites (in Soulatgé), volcanic rocks (Col de Couisse).

By their quantity (the period of excavations from 1967 to 1994 yielded about 260,000 objects including bones and lithic remains) and their diversity, these vestiges give much information on prehistoric human groups that lived there, but also on animals, plants, and climates that followed in the region during these 600,000 years.

On July 27, 2015, the Museum of Prehistory of Tautavel announced the discovery by young volunteer excavators of a tooth dating back 550,000 years on the site.

[11] Its powerful filling, about ten meters thick, covers most of the Middle Pleistocene and has been the subject of numerous attempts at radiometric dating that are sometimes contradictory.

[5] At the top of the set III (layer E), the bifaces are proportionally more, which led Henry de Lumley to link the industry to the average Acheulean.

[1][12] However, these differences should be tempered because the numbers of bifaces are very small in levels G to D, and where the proportions between major technological classes slightly vary, whether we consider the whole industry or only the tooling.

[13] The materials used are mostly local (80%) and were taken from the alluvial deposits of Verdouble, but some came from areas 30 km far north-east and southwest of the site, reflecting a good knowledge of the regional resources and an anticipation of needs.