Megalithic holiday week: May 2010

If you’ve been following these posts and pages then you’ll know that we are happily established in the midst of a lot of old stones in the south of France. And while I’m a relatively recent arrival to the online community of stone-seekers, Mary and I are old hands at the holiday business.

We’ve been running an open house for all sorts of courses and speciality weeks for six years now : yoga teachers from the UK come with their groups and we cook for them – painting groups from San Francisco, cookery groups from Cork, Cathar researchers from Dublin – walkers, botanists and birdwatchers : and that’s not counting our own painting and mosaic groups. We have a big pool, great food – and the wine is free.

For 2010 we are offering a week of dolmen and menhir exploration here in one of the lesser-known megalithic centres of southern France. From Saturday May 22 to Saturday May 29 our guest house/art retreat is open to all, on a flexible-stay basis.

More info, on the Megalithic holiday page.

The last vestiges of the once-great Barroubio dolmen

It seems obvious to us all now – the search for a megalith begins with the internet. But for earlier prehistorians the task meant painstaking research through various local libraries, plus time-consuming correspondance and encounters with local inhabitants.

Had it not been for a solitary mention in a 1927 publication, and a chance meeting with a local historian, I would never have found this sad remnant of what must once have been a fine and sizeable dolmen.

For more info and photos, see Barroubio dolmen Page.

La Pierre des Couteaux, or Mère de Dieu dolmen

The search for this was a typical mix of research and luck – involving name confusion, lack of any toponymic help, misleading  information (possibly deliberate) from old sources, help from a local man – and dogged determination.

And in the end it was my Mary that led us to it!

For more info and photos, go to Pierre des Couteaux now established as La Mère de Dieu or more commonly, Le Roc Gris dolmen page.

The Fournès dolmen and menhir and how to tell them apart.

Up ’til this morning I was unaware of the existence of Fournès-Cabardès ( the difference, were you wondering, between è and é, is that between the vowel-sounds of ‘may’ and ‘egg’. Not a lot to us, but of great matter to the French. Say ‘may’ and your jaw drops – say ‘egg’ and your mouth widens. Crucial. If you live here).

I was living in happy ignorance also, that there were two megaliths close-by. But now that I have been there and seen them I am no longer happy – because They, the French mapmakers IGN, have got the pair of megaliths all wrong, back-asswards, vice-versa and widdershins.

The Captain, over at Megalithic Portal, of course had it right all along : the site to the west marked dolmen, is in fact a 4 metre long monolith, fallen half out of a fearsome-looking entrance hole to Hades.

While the Pierre Plantée (stretch the mouth just a leetel wider . . . ) with its massive cap-stone, and solitary orthostat, and S-W orientation, better merits the name dolmen.

I’m not sure how The Captain came upon the reference to Peyregat menhir – because there’s no such place in the region – but somewhere in the archives of the Carcassonne scientific society  SESA of which I am a member, there are photos which I will unearth asap : Fournes-Cabardès – Menhir couché au lieudit Peyregat. Vues du nord-ouest et du sud-est, 8 x 11 cm, photographies de Germain Sicard prises le 9 mars 1897.

But for more modern photos and info on this impressive stone – look in the Peyregat Menhir Page.

For more of the same on the Fournès ( jaw just a leetel lower . . . ) dolmen – go to the Fournès Dolmen Page. Lesson concluded, you may relax now.

Andorra: a megalith-free zone?

We visit Andorra 3-4 times a year to see friends in Arinsal and walk the mountains. Since our friends are not as ’stone mad’ as me, I have so far not suggested we go hunting for megaliths. But last weekend I persuaded them that it might be interesting to go looking for dolmens and menhirs – and so I checked on the Megalithic Portal map – where I found a big blank space – not a single mention! I thought I must have made some mistake, so I began searching the Net – but the only information I found was on the blogs of David Gálvez Casellas and Jordi Casamajor. And the news was not good : there are, it seems, no megaliths in Andorra.
David is a teacher and journalist, and Jordi a sculptor and graphic artist, whose interest in rock carvings has taken him all over the Pyrennees. His blog documents his researches, which reveal that while Andorra may be poor in dolmens and menhirs – it is rich in cupulas and carvings, from the late Neolithic up to recent centuries.
David leaves us with tantalising possibilities : there is documented evidence of at least one standing stone – carved subsequently with a St. Christoper figure – but mysteriously removed in the late ’70’s. There are slabbed stone stuctures which may be dolmens, though not in any ‘classic’ form – and there are the suggestive remains of groups of stones, which may simply be accidents of nature.
He acknowledges the impact that the construction of modern Andorra has had on elements of the old ways. I also suspect that the Catholic church may well have been determined to erase as much of the ‘pagan’ past as possible. I would be interested to discuss other theories as to why there are megaliths in all the surrounding areas of this region – like the harrespil (basque cromlechs) – but none in Andorra itself.

Research by archaeologists seems to show that during the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze age, dolmens and grottoes were linked in the funerary practices here in the Languedoc/Catalunya region. The grotto was a place of primary inhumation, open to the elements and to animals. When the bones had lost their flesh, they were transferred to the dolmen and sealed in. Dolmens were built a short walk from grottos and could be part of a ‘religion’ that saw both as some sort of ‘womb’ of  ‘Mother Nature’ – places to which the dead should be returned.
Frequently, springs are found in the same immediate area, thus forming a three-part system: springs and ‘holy wells’ are life-sustaining elements vital to these small communities, while the need to satisfy the requirements of the dead were provided by the grottos and the dolmens. Of course this is pure speculation – by me and a few others.
Thus, if one has located some important and significant spring or well (often ‘taken over’ by the Church) then there may be also a grotto or cave nearby – and near to that again, a dolmen.
The dolmens in our region nearly all point south-east, south, or south-west, and they are all on a high place, looking out over a valley or plain – but they are rarely on the very top of a hill.
With these three elements in mind, I will be back next spring with map and compass and hope – and I might just meet up with these keen searchers on the mountain-slopes.

Note: David’s blog does describe his visit to the cist-graves discovered in 1991 at Juberri, known as La Feixa del Moro ( The Moor’s Table).

Feixa del Moro at Juberri in Andorra. Photo David Galvez Casellas

‘Following the excavation there was an attempt – perhaps incomplete, but very laudable – at a reconstruction of the environment and that there were replanted many species of flora that had been documented as growing in the area 5,000 years ago . The sense was that of being in a beautiful place, almost untouched, with echoes of the sacred. At our first sighting of the first cista : prominent, well-kept, very well built, amazing.’ (Trans. Google and me).

He is careful to distinguish between the prehistoric, and the megalithic. It would be interesting to know the dimensions of these burial stones and their orientation.

Feixa del Moro. Une tombe néolithique en ciste dans le domaine archéologique d’Andorre.

CANTURRI P. ; LLOVERA X. ;

La première sépulture néolithique découverte en Andorre, attribuable au Néolithique moyen-récent de Catalogne. Type 3 des “Sépulcros de fosa”, faciès des cistes, apparenté au Solsonien.

unfound stones

I have yet to return empty-handed from a day of dolmen-hunting, even if I fail to find anything. The map may say ‘Pierre Droite’ but a tractor or a religion may have removed it.

I have searched repeatedly for these, and will continue until I find their ‘presence’ or the reason for their absence. These searches uncover places and reveal people: Germain, an old man with passionate memories of a megalithic necropolis discovered as a young man up on les Causses de La Planette - meeting him up in the hills has set in motion a whole new area of reseach.

This Easter, we went looking for le dolmen de Combe Violon above La Livinière, but a cold wet wind cut short the search. The dolmens de Mousse were not far away but again it was too cold to stay – even though we were close to hell. L’Enfer is a barren hillside of white jumbled rubble, a petrified torrent of shattered limestone that resolves into walls and tumuli and capitelles –

Just beyond is the hillside that contains les dolmens de Mousse and le grand dolmen de Lauriol – but not for us that day. I returned to the internet to research these dolmens – and discovered that someone else was up there that afternoon – Yves Le Pestipon had posted photos of them on a remarkable multi-author weblog called L’Astrée.net – an unfolding series of events and situations, writings and images – including many on megalithic culture.

a weekend in the country

We think we live in the country. That is until we leave our little village on the plain and venture 40 minutes south into Les Hautes Corbières, to stay with friends in a renovated bergerie in its own valley. Here wild boars outnumber humans ten-to-one, and eagles cruise the thermals.

I was expecting to make a 2 hour trek, following the excellent guide to ‘Dolmens et Menhirs en Languedoc et Roussillon’ by Bruno Marc. It turned out that the dolmen de la Porteille was just 45 minutes from the house – and though not fully signposted from our end, it was a glorious ramble on yet another sunlit day.

The bright light almost overwhelms the photos with contrast.

It’s orientation is 245. The coordinates given on the Megalithic Portal put it about 500 metres across the valley to the NE. Using the French GeoPortail.fr site, I make its coordinates 2.35′57″ E, 42.59′48″ N or in decimal degrees: 2.599166, 42.996666

This is peering down into what is quite a deep cavity. The stone on the left side seems less an orthostat than a natural flat slab, making this almost a fissure tomb. It measures 3 m. long outside [2 m. inside] and 60 cm. wide inside. It’s 1.5 m. deep.

The dense maquis conceals the fact that we are on the crest of a ridge with views of holm-oak covered hills all around. But it was no surprise to find that Pic du Canigou, the sacred mountain of the eastern Pyrenees, was also in sight. Developments in prehistoric funerary practice and ceramics came as much from the Iberian south, as from east across the Mediterranean [or from the Alps]. This region was and is a crossroads of cultures.

And it was no surprise either to discover there was a grotte de Matthias not many minutes further down the slope. The conjunction of cave and dolmen is repeated all over the region. A later post will examine this relationship.

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 >

Hunting for the Allee Couverte du Bois de Monsieur

There are few people to be seen out on the Causses of the Minervois or the hills of the Corbières, at this, or any other time of the year. In twelve months one might encounter a dozen other walkers. It’s a real and rare pleasure to be out in the wilds on my own. But I have to remind myself that I am not alone: there are others out there, and they are dangerous. Some may be five times my weight, and angry. Some may weigh less than me, but they are armed and stupid. Between the wild boars and the hunters, I’m at risk. The autumn/winter season is not over ’til the end of this month.

A hunter’s stand above Assignan

There are one and a half million chasseurs in France. In the 2006/2007 season they killed 466,352 sangliers out of a population of over a million. The mortality rate is decreasing (for humans, that is) – from 40 per year to 25 recently. All of them hunters. Of 142 people wounded – 12 were non-hunters. Two weeks ago, not far from here, a hunter panicked when a boar charged him. He killed his companion with an accidental blast. In 2005, Claude Rossetti of Montlaur three villages away, was killed while gathering mushrooms on Alaric mountain. He was shot accidentally by an ex-gendarme who was out hunting alone, illegally, on a day when boar-hunting is forbidden. One son, Sylvain, has started a national movement called Partageons La Nature – Share Nature, in an effort to bring an end to unnecessary death and injury.

cartridge cases below the shooting platform

His other son, Claude, wrote recently about the shooting in understandable – if barely intelligible – anger : – ‘ pour son acte heroique il a ete condamne a 6 mois de prison ferme amenageable ( autrement dit RIEN ) dans l’ aude il n y a pas de jour de non chasse quand ce n’est pas le petit c’est le gros gibier et en plus on chasse partout route chemin garrigue public prive et meme a n importe quelle heure du jour ou de la nuit dans l aude si lon n est pas chasseur on est rien . . . ‘
‘ there’s no day when there’s no hunting . . . ‘ – ‘ they’re hunting anywhere public land private land . . . at any time of the day or night . . . ‘ – ‘ if you’re not a hunter here – you’re nobody . . . ‘
The rules governing la chasse au sanglier have been tightened following this and other incidents – spot-checks for permits, and regulation orange vests and hats. But it is a macho culture where drinking plays a big role. I keep alert, fear the guns more than the tusks, and look forward to March.

Meanwhile there is the joy of being out in this landscape with such stones.

a borie or stone shelter in the causses of Minervois

This is all that remains of the Allée Couverte du Bois de Monsieur :-

Do you really want directions?
OK. Drive out of Agel on the D20, past Le Moulin de Madame. Somewhere along here the road turns into the D128. Fork L onto the D26 and go thru the hamlet of La Roueyre and on past La Grotte du Gourp des Boeufs, where the road morphs into the D177. You can do all this without knowing any of this – basically you’ve just gone from Agel to Assignan. The dolmen is in the far corner of the last vineyard on the left, down the track on the left after the pond above the village. It lies at 2.52′40″ E , 43.23′50″ N.

I came here armed with just one sentence gleaned from a 1962 ‘account of the activities of a member of the Societé d’ Etudes Scientifiques de l’Aude‘. In a paper he gave on the prehistoric relics of the region, he noted four sad, forgotten and neglected dolmens in the Minervois. One of them was the Allée Couverte du Bois de Monsieur, 500 metres off the Assignan to Coulouma road, on a ‘petit mamelon.’
Now, every maquis-covered bump in this landscape could be described as a ‘little breast’. So I assiduously fossicked over all the more likely ones – before doing the sensible thing : ask a local. The local turned out to be Monsieur Donnadieu, the mayor of Pardailhan (not of Donnadieu, which is a hameau nearby). And a font of information on all things historical in the neighbourhood. I managed to stem the flow with a promise to return soon – and got back up the road to a hill that resembled no breast I had ever known.
The dolmen is not marked on any map. The Bois de Monsieur is not mentioned on any plan cadastral. The breast at best is but a chest.
And the Allée Couverte – is just one last large orthostat surrounded by a heap of jumbled slabs. From the angle of the sun the dolmen is facing SW.
Move along now, folks. Nothing more to see.

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 >>