This little stone is a modest affair at 1 m. 50 tall by 1 m. wide and 20 cm. thick. It is oriented south-east. It has many counterparts scattered around the region – named or unacknowledged – all around the same size. These stones seem to be in a class apart from the ‘grands menhirs‘ – three or more times the height and often worked to a deliberate shape. Why do we not distinguish them?
Small and obscurely located though it is – it still is marked on the map:
But it does not get a mention in any Inventoires of the region, or anywhere else on or off the internet. Not even Germain Sicard, who researched the plateau of La Planette (or La Matte) mentions it.
There are two dolmens (one reported here) just a few hundred metres distant – plus a dozen more on the plateau: was the menhir placed there to signal the territory of a Neolithic clan? There is also an Iron Age oppidum on La Planette – was the stone a boundary mark connected to that? It certainly has no relation to any present-day land-division.
The path is narrow and the hillside steep and densely wooded: these are the only two angles possible.
Precise GPS coordinates for the menhir and the dolmens will be submitted to SESA in Carcassonne. Or contact me.
