A short walk upstream from the falls, on a terrace above the river, is one of the most important Stone Age sites in Africa. Excavations led by John Desmond Clark from the 1950s onward exposed a remarkable archaeological sequence: layer upon layer of human occupation from the Acheulean (handaxes, around 500,000 years ago) through the Middle Stone Age and on into the Iron Age, all sealed by the unusually stable, waterlogged sediments at the gorge mouth.
The waterlogging is what makes the site exceptional — wood, seeds, and other organic remains have survived where they would normally rot, including the earliest known wooden tools and the 2023 discovery of interlocking notched logs that may be the world's oldest deliberately built wooden structure. There is no visitor centre on site; most of the finds are at the British Museum and the Livingstone Museum in southern Zambia. The terrace itself is unmarked, but a local guide from Mbala can point out the main excavation areas and the broad terrace stratigraphy that gives the site its scientific importance.