Located in the heart of “Néandertal l’expo, une saison en Nouvelle-Aquitaine”, the Néanderlab is a room apart. Visitors enter a laboratory: the walls are decorated with plans and photos, skulls and bones from the Neanderthal period are placed on tables equipped with magnifying glasses and microscopes.
This space allows young audiences to slip into the shoes of an archaeologist who is carrying out excavations and research on the site of madness north of Poitiers (Vienne).
Among the workshops offered: the reconstruction of flint. “You have the possibility of reassembling flint. The work of archaeologists and ethicists is to do the opposite of prehistoric men since they will reassemble the flints that have been carved, explains Florie Fortin, mediator at the Pôle d’ Interpretation of prehistory. You are going to do a little typology, that is to say try to find out what tools they used if they used bifaces, scrapers, scrapers. We will also be able to study the traces that you can find on flints. It’s called the geology trace, so knowing if they worked wood, bone or, for example, limestone.”
Find information on the exhibition and the program of events on the PIP website.