Le site des Fendeux est un vaste gisement de plein air, localisé sur le versant sud d'un petit plateau. Ce site, dont le ou les niveaux ont été perturbés par des colluvionnements, se caractérise par l'exploitation sur place de galets de silex jurassique (chaule), selon différents systèmes de débitage (Discoïde, Levallois, récurrent centripète). L'outillage, essentiellement composé de racloirs, d'encoches et denticulés et de quelques bifaces, permet de rapprocher l'industrie du Moustérien de tradition acheuléenne.

The site of Les Fendeux (Coulanges) is in the north-east of the Allier département within 2 km of the Loire. This vast open-air site (3 hectares — approximately 7 1/2 acres), is located on the southern slope of a small plateau and was the subject of rescue excavations in 1998-1999. There are several different occupation periods: Middle Palaeolithic, Middle Neolithic, Middle Bronze Age, late La Tène, Gallo-Roman and Carolingian. The lithic remains dating to the Middle Palaeolithic period (n = 1082) were found in sandy sediments resulting from the erosion of the upper slopes, a few centimetres to one metre thick, which cover the more recent occupations. This site is characterised by the exploitation of Jurassic flint nodules, according to various systems of flaking (discoid, Levallois, recurrent centripetal). There are three different systems of discoid flaking; two are similar and include the majority of cores. In the first method the cores are partially exploited, in the second the cores are exploited on one face and in the third on two faces. There are relationships between the partial discoid and the bifacial discoid flaking systems. There are very few Levallois flakes (IL = 6.9) and only one operational scheme seems present on this site: that of centripetal recurrent Levallois flaking. Centripetal recurrent flaking (non-Levallois) is characterised by the lack of preparation of the core face before the detachment of flakes which are more or less parallel, or at an angle to the intersection of the two faces of the core. The majority of the retouched tools (n = 98) are mainly composed of side scrapers (mostly simple), notched tools, denticulates and a small number of bifaces. The typology of the Les Fendeux assemblage is similar to the Acheulean-tradition Mousterian (MTA), which is very widespread in this area.