Autumn 2009 Info/Update: Selling Old Stones.

This is a new post, after a long gap. I’ll retain it as a Page, on the right – for those who may have wondered why nothing has appeared since December 2008. It’s just a brief explication/justification for the absence of posts, and the reason for the changed look.

The effects of the world financial crisis were felt here, as everywhere else. With fuel prices soaring, and the prospect of a difficult year ahead for our specialist holiday business, we decided to start economising and localising. My spare time went into expanding the kitchen garden, and beginning a much larger one with friends in the village. I spent more time working and connecting with our vigneron friends who were already suffering the effects of a collapse in wine-prices.

Dolmen-hunting and hill-walking took a rest: I was more concerned with trucking in horse-manure and helping in the vineyards.

I don’t believe for a moment that we are out of the woods : the global financial mess has a long way to run. But we have survived another year (in fact guest and course numbers were up!)  and fuel prices are reasonable. So this autumn the hunt for dolmens and menhirs, grottes et oppida, has recommenced.

And I have not been idle in terms of research and meetings and discussions : the documents I have unearthed, and the people I’ve encountered have led to a great number of hitherto ‘known’ but ‘lost’ megaliths: some recently visited, while others remain as tantalising possibilities. There are many more old stones here in our small corner of the world than I ever imagined.

Two further notes of importance:

1. The look of the site: I think that photos are as important as words, and that for many people, big clear images are valuable. Few people are willing to put themselves through an assault course just to see a sad pair of stones on a blistering hillside, and others are unable.

Without the ‘noir’ background, the website is less ‘dramatic-looking’. But the image size can now be 50% bigger – 750 pixels wide compared to 495. To my eye, it’s a better mix of images and words – and with the ‘flexible-width’ format of this early WordPress theme I like the way it fills the screen.

2. There will be advertising : but only our own. WordPress dot com is blessedly free of ads, and it’s a wonder how they provide such a service for free.

But I can’t justify, to my family, the time and money spent on hunting old stones without there being some return. There will be a low-key but frequent reminders, in posts but not on the permanent Pages, that we are organising ‘tailored tours’ of the megalithic sites of our region. These will be low-cost, all-inclusive breaks and weeks for groups of keen individuals or for mixed-interest holidays for family + friends, where good food and pool-side lounging are as important as archaeology.

We will be as low-cost as Ryanair (who fly in here from just about every corner of Ireland and the UK) – but a lot less brash. But be prepared for some regular low-impact soft-selling.

Lastly, my Post & Page system: this has evolved from the early posts, into the style I shall continue with. The posts introduce a protohistoric site or topic, with a paragraph and a photo. The site or subject will simultaneously appear as a permanent Page in the column, with more info and all the photos. It means there’ll be some duplication, but also no need to search the archives – everything of importance will be in the Page list.

La Clape necropolis at Laroque de Fa

This hunt could have gone disastrously wrong: with my enthusiastic daughter visiting from Ireland, and my unenthusiastic wife, I nearly managed to have us stumbling around the wrong mountain all afternoon. For, when doing anything involving maps and the wilds, it is generally advisable to know where you’re actually starting from . . .

Fortunately this time, despite starting from the wrong place and aiming at the wrong place, with Jessi’s unquenchable enthusiasm plus Mary’s unerring sense of direction plus a lot of luck, we got to the dolmens.

This is La Clape in the middle-distance : it’s occitan for a stoney hill. There are 8 dolmens scattered around this acre or two of limestone and box-shrub, according to Bruno Marc in his excellent ‘Guide to Dolmens & Menhirs of Languedoc-Roussillion’ – but we only found six.

How to get there plus lots more photos and text, on the La Clape Necropolis page, right column.

Shopping for dolmens

Today I set out with this little shopping list :

Quarante (village in Minervois-Herault)
Vestiges préhistoriques et antiques

* Habitats chalcolithiques : Bel Air, Fontanche.
* Dolmen de Pech Ménel.
* Cromlech de Malviés.
* Cachette de fondeur (fin âge du Bronze) à Bellevue.
* 35 villas romaines principalement : Pech Ménel, La Massale, Saint-Fréchoux, Les Clapiers, Parazols, Les Sèmièges, La Condamine de Rivière, Les Commandeurs, La Barreire.
* Tombes wisigothiques : Souloumiac, Parazols, Grange Haute, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Saint-Fréchoux.
* Les Huyères : ancien fief seigneurial ; cimetière abandonné, 3 silos.
* Nécropole à incinération du type “Champ d’Urnes” du 1er âge du Fer au lieu dit Recobre (35 tombes, mobilier au musée de Narbonne).

But I have learnt to take all this with a large pinch of ‘hand-crafted’ salt from Gruissan.
I set out with high hopes – while fully concious that half of this guff has been cobbled together from old documents, and that in the land-rush of the 1970’s any old stone that happened to be sitting in a field growing lichen was bulldozered into the ditch to make way for the Great New Wines of Languedoc.

Now that the grants have dried up – and so have some of the French (they are no longer drinking three times their body-weight in wine per annum – man, woman and child) – it may be too late.
I only managed to find one of these sites.

The dig at Pech Ménel

And even if it was a dismal collection of stones, and even if I did have to cross vineyards to interview every person I saw on the landscape, only to hear that No: they had never heard of any neolithic site, or stone alignment, or dolmen, or prehistoric settlement, and that they had a) Lived here all their lives or b) Just moved to the area …. it didn’t matter. The day was sunny and calm and just about every heap of stones spoke volumes about mediaeval toil – and never mind the prehistory.

Three capitelles at Fontanche – field stones cleared and structured as shelters.

So: no cromlech at Malvies today – and there was no one in at the Chateau to ask. But a stone circle down here in the Midi – now that is worth going back for.
No visible neolithic habitat, either, at Bel-Air. As for Fontanche, this wine-domain seemed deserted – yet there, parked in a weedy courtyard was a beautifully restored 1960’s BMW 600 series . . . There wasn’t time to explore the Iron Age necropolis at “the place called ‘Recobre’” with its Urn-field vestiges. But now that I know the lie of the land I’ll be able to make more focussed enquiries.
While the under-30’s with paid jobs were stacked up over the thermal-ridges in their paragliders, and the retired over 60’s were reliving their cycling-club heydays, in packs of bulgey yellow lycra [this is France-Partout, au weekend] the poor vignerons are still hard at work, pruning the vines or cleaning vats – and answering idiot questions from foreigners about old stones. Yes – there was a dolmen. And a dig had started last summer and the man to ask was an historian I’d come across before – Jacques Gatorze, of Cessenon.

I had forgotten how awful a dig looks : the steel pegs, the string and the plastic. I rather wish I hadn’t come across it like this: a crime-scene in the undergrowth.
Perhaps I am a Romantic, and not the Classicist I pretend to be.

More on the Pech Ménel dolmen page >

Necropolis at Bois Bas

Bois Bas is a farm at the end of a narrow winding road high up on the Causse above Minerve. It’s a maze – and an amazing place. Twelve dolmens and five diaclases, or fissure tombs on less than one acre. And all in a near-trackless jungle of maquis : holm-oak, box, spiney juniper and rock. Lots of rock. Terraces and pavements and slabs and piles of blinding-white limestone – any of which might be a tomb.

The farm was bought by a co-operative or commune of ten, a year ago – they are carrying on from where the old owners left off: a big herd of goats, a handful of sheep, and some cows. They are modernising the dairy, and extending the campsite, with earth-closets. There are ensuite rooms to rent, a restaurant, a pool, and a stage for the weekly music and drama gigs. It’s ecological and not political – and while they don’t mind the odd dolmaniac turning up, they are busy and likely to get busier with the season. Park carefully, and ask for permission & directions at the main house.

The maquis covers most of this headland that slopes south of the farm towards the cliffs of the Gorges de la Cesse. Skirt two meadows and go through a gate and the low-growing woodland begins. A cart-track runs south: pass the first junction, leading off left, and continue a couple of minutes ’til you see two small piles of stones on your left. You leave the track here to enter the maquis. The owners have no wish to tart the site up, so you’ll need to sharpen up your ‘trackers’ eyes to spot the unobtrusive signs they have placed by the side of the path, and in the crooks of branches – indicating where there are ‘interesting events’. Some are no more than a jumble of rocks half-buried in the undergrowth, where a half-visible orthostat and a compass-alignment are all you have to help identify it. Others are breath-taking in their massiveness. Most are within a few paces of the main path – others lie beyond. It is easy to become disorientated as you duck and weave between the dense dwarf-oaks. And it’s easy to find yourself deep in a thicket standing on a pile of rocks that lured you on, only to leave you disappointed, and lost.

Bruno Marc has written extensively about megaliths in Languedoc-Roussillon, and he has numbered twelve here, with a further three north of the farmhouse. I only found eight this time, and five diaclases – before stumbling suddenly out of the dense maquis onto the rock-ledge above the gorge. To go from ten-metre-visibility, to 500 metres of empty air, and a drop nearly as much – is stunning. The necropolis merits a good day – so pack lunch and sit out up high on warm rock- before plunging back in for more.

For more photos, descriptions and short video – go to Bois Bas page >>

The Minerve Dolmens

Around Minerve, the number of dolmens counted stand at: one at Bruneau, four at Mayranne, six at Les Lacs, five at Le Bouys and twelve at Bois-Bas. The necropolis at Bois-Bas is unique in the Minervois by the sheer number of dolmens distributed over such a small area. The count varies : from 12 dolmens in a good state of conservation, there could be as many as 25 in all. Various forms of construction are represented in this necropolis: dolmens with passages, dolmens with low stone walls, megalithic cists, and at least two diaclases or fissures in the limestone pavement, still covered with slabs. In the commune of Minerve alone, four groups have been registered. The dolmens of Le Causse Grand were first noted by Renouvrier in 1831, and were searched thoroughly. Cazalis de Fondouce in 1879 described six dolmens, and J. Miquel thought there were ten below the farm of Les Lacs, between the chemin du Bouys and the rocks that overhang the Gorge de la Cesse. J. Lauriol, J. Guilaine, Audibert, Doctor Arnal, J. Hinault and P. Lambert have all added their descriptions. The orientation is generally south-west and south. The builders belonged to a nomadic group called Pasteurs des plateaux, the upland herdsmen, who lived in dry-stone huts and wooden dwellings.

Finds recovered from the dolmens include:-
Personal ornaments and weaponry, pottery, and skeletal remains. Calcareous pearls – perles des cavernes – which are pisoliths composed by accretions of calcite around a germ of grit in running water. Ornaments made of shell; schist stones glittering with micas, hornblende, graphite and quartz; polished bone.
Arrow-heads of flint, bone and bronze.
Awls, rings, amulets and buttons in bronze
Clothing and hair pins in bronze
Large pottery items – campaniform and Verrazian
Skeletal remains: teeth, skull-bones, finger-bones

These items and documents relating to the various sites can been seen at the museum in Minerve village.

For more photos, 19th. century drawings and full text, go to Pages >>