ABSTRACT
Phase 4 comprises evidence of rebuilding and reuse, well-dated to the twelfth century. Twelfth-century architectural fragments in the convent museum suggest substantial, architecturally elaborate refurbishment at that date. The renovation of the Large Cave and adjacent rooms with ashlar walls, stone-built doorways and vaults, the attempt to replicate the function of the basins in the apsidal end of the cave, and possibly the patching of its wall mosaics, probably indicate the restoration of its Christian religious use. The ashlar wall added to the north side of the Chambre Obscure contained a narrow slit-window, constructed at a very low level, so that one would need to bend or kneel on the rock floor of the room in order to see through it. According to Marie de Nazareth, in the nineteenth-century local people left lamps as votives on open land at an adjacent site, characterised by foundations and abandoned building blocks.
