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There are already good indications that most of the archaeological levels have suffered very little post-depositional disturbance. This is evidenced first by the nearly complete, articulated Neandertal skeleton and the intact hearths in the lower levels.
Second, in the lev-els with hearths there are numerous instances of thermally fractured flint whose pieces remained in direct contact with each other (see figure on right); which again demonstrates that no movement of the sediment occurred since the time of burning. Third, analyses of artifact ori-entations, observations on edge damage on the lithics, and geological studies, including mi-cromorphological analyses, confirm these ini-tial observations. Assessing the site’s formation processes will continue to be a major focus of the excavation, using a number of lines of evidence including thin sections, artifact orientations, lithic assemblage composition including analysis of the small finds, artifact damage, faunal as-semblage composition, and bone modification.
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