The inclusion of the latter of these deposits led the archaeological team studying the site to propose that cannibalism had taken place at Fontbrégoua, although other archaeologists have instead suggested that they represent evidence of secondary burial.

Pickering, who instead suggested that the evidence was better explained by defleshing rituals involved in secondary burial, drawing ethnographic comparisons with certain Indigenous Australian practices.

[5] From the stratigraphic and cultural evidence, archaeologists suggested that the cave was used as a temporary residential camp for the local agricultural population during the 5th and 4th millennia BCE.

[9] The Neolithic people who lived in the region sometimes used the cave for storing their herds of goat and sheep, as evidenced by layers of burnt ovicaprine faeces.

[2] Pickering was supported in his hypothesis by the European prehistorian Paul Bahn, who published a short one-page article in the journal Nature in 1990, in which he proclaimed that the case for cannibalism at Fontbrégoua must be considered "not proven.

"[3] In a 1992 paper published in the Evolutionary Anthropology journal, Villa critiqued Pickering's ideas, reiterating her position that the remains at the site represented "the only well-documented case of cannibalism in European prehistory".

[7] Rejecting Pickering's claims, she remarks that secondary burial does not represent a "meaningful alternative" to cannibalism, which remained the "simplest and most satisfactory explanation" for the evidence found in the cave.

Villa also questions the accuracy of the ethnographic accounts that Pickering draws on, noting that several of them actually believed that the Australian mortuary practices that they described constituted evidence for cannibalism.