Montlleó sits at 1,144 m a.s.l. on a low knoll in the high, east–west Cerdanya valley of the eastern Pyrenees, a natural corridor between the Bay of Biscay and the Gulf of Lion. Excavated since 2000, the open-air site preserves a 23,000 – 17,000 cal BP occupation sequence that spans the harshest part of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) through early deglaciation. Because mountain ice in the Pyrenees retreated earlier than the global LGM, Montlleó shows that hunter-gatherers could exploit altitudes that were once thought permafrost-bound.
