The Palaeolithic/Mesolithic site of Saleux was discovered along the route of the A 16 motorway at the point where it crosses the valley of the Selle river and has been investigated by ten excavations since 1993. Some dozen localities assigned to the Federmessergruppen tradition and the Middle Mesolithic were uncovered. The archaeological occupations of the site were located at the edge of the present day alluvial plain and lie alongside a palaeo-channel. The conducted research sheds new light not only on the technical and cultural identity of the groups occupying the region during the course of the Allerød oscillation and the Boreal chronozone, but also on the spatial structuring of the inhabited area and on the ways in which the territory was occupied.
Saleux is given additional importance by the discovery here of Final Paleolithic human remains, and it remains a reference site for the study of the late glacial and the beginning of the Holocene in northern France.