Welcome to the Virtual Poeymaü application

The Poeymaü, a cave located in the western Pyrenees (in Arudy, France), was excavated by Georges Laplace and his collaborators from the early 1950s to the late 1980s.

The site is currently restudied by the participants in the PAVO research project (Préhistoire ancienne de la vallée d'Ossau). Archaeological information was extracted from Laplace's excavation field notes related to the 1950s campaigns (archives of the Musée national de Préhistoire). About 15,000 objects are documented and located in the cave's space.

The Virtual Poeymaü is a web application to explore this data set. It can filter the data, plot them with interactive 3D visualisation, generate and download 2D plans, longitudinal and transverse sections, generate summary tables, and explore the timeline of the excavation from 1951 to 1985.

The remains are located by two methods, called:

  • “point”: using the xyz coordinates when they are given in the fieldwork documentation and,
  • “volume”: if only ranges of xyz coordinates are given, by sampling random values within these ranges.
Note that, from 2023, the Poeymaü dataset is also presented using the archeoViz application and referenced on the archeoViz Portal.


For more information:
  • Software:
    • R code: github repository.
    • reference: Plutniak, S. 2021, “Virtual Poeymaü: a web application to explore the archaeological data from the excavation archives of the Poeymaü cave (France)”, Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4765693.
  • Documentation:
    • Plutniak, S. 2021, “Virtual Poeymaü : visualisation 3D interactive des données archéologiques extraites des archives de fouilles de la grotte du Poeymaü », Préhistoire ancienne de la vallée d'Ossau, HDL: 10670/1.juoxn4.
    • Plutniak, S. 2020, “Archives des fouilles de la grotte du Poeymaü (1951–1956) : informatisation et spatialisation des restes archéologiques”. Pétillon, J.-M. et B. Marquebielle (dir.), Préhistoire ancienne de la vallée d'Ossau. Paléoenvironnement et sociétés de chasseurs-collecteurs dans le piémont pyrénéen. Projet collectif de recherche. Bilan 2020, DRAC-SRA Nouvelle-Aquitaine, hal-03092989.

Click on a point to get more information.


3D plot options




Remains class and localisation method

Remains by layer and localisation method