The site is a significant locality of regional Neanderthal and European early modern human occupation, as thousands of fossils and artifacts were discovered that are all attributed to a long and contiguous stratigraphic sequence from 120,000 years ago, the Middle Paleolithic to less than 5,000 years ago, the late Neolithic.

A robust sequence of sediments was identified during extensive excavations by geologist Edouard Dupont, who undertook the first probings as early as 1867.

His sediment sequences are considered to be of little reliability and his discoveries in the archives of the Royal Belgielsan Institute of Natural Sciences have been reviewed and re-classified in recent years.

[6][1] The site accounts for a remarkable variety of prehistoric objects: thousands of bones of prehistoric humans and large mammals, a whistle, stone artifacts with stylized engravings, an approximately 5,000-year-old child's grave, the fossilized cranium of a Paleolithic dog, a knife made from a human rib, the largest collection of Neanderthal fossils of Northern Europe, hand axes, harpoons, necklaces, ivory chopsticks, engraved ivory platelets, carved reindeer horn and skinned and filleted human remains, that suggest cannibalism among Neanderthals.

Additional artifacts can be found in numerous private collections, as during the 1950s several amateur archaeologists were permitted access to the caves.

Mitochondrial DNA indicates that the canid was not a direct ancestor of modern dogs, but rather of an extinct side branch[12][13] or an aborted domestication attempt.

Based on mitochondrial DNA of five local fossils it was concluded that the first modern Europeans arrived directly from Africa without a detour via Asia.

Other cultural type elements such as perforated tubes that were perhaps used as flutes, indicate that the caves continued to be inhabited during the late Neolithic.

An even younger object discovered in Goyet, attributed to the Iron Age (around 500 BCE), is a knife made from a human rib.