Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric PeoplesNadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
History
Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
Nadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
Archaeology; Prehistoric peoples
It was in Brittany that the art of erecting dolmens reached its fullest
development, and it is there that the relics found in the tombs are of
the most important character. Nowhere do we find weapons more carefully
preserved, more delicately finished ornaments of a more remarkable
kind. The Museum of Vannes, where most of the valuable objects found in
the excavations are preserved, possesses quartzite, fibrolite, diorite,
and even nephrite and jadeite hatchets, some of which materials are not
native to Europe; as well as amber beads and a necklace of calaïte,
that precious stone described by Pliny, and which long remained unknown
after his time.
Hatchets or celts are more numerous than any other objects found
beneath dolmens of Brittany. A report, read by M. R. Galles to the
Société Polymathique of Morbihan, enumerates the objects found with the
dead beneath the dolmen of Saint-Michel. This report is a regular
inventory, in which figure eleven jade celts of great elegance of form
and varying from about three and a half to sixteen inches, two larger
celts of coarse workmanship both broken, twenty-six small fibrolite
celts with sharp edges, nine pendants, more than one hundred jasper
beads which had been part of a necklace, and lastly an ivory ring.
Other megalithic monuments were not less rich in relics. Thirty
hatchets were picked up at Tumiac; more than a hundred, nearly all of
tremolite, at Mané-er-H’roek; which were remarkable for their
regularity of form, their polish, and the variety of their colors. They
seldom bear any traces of having been used, and in many cases they
appear to have been intentionally broken, probably in conformity with
some funereal rite. Finistère, though not so rich as Morbihan,
furnished an important contingent. The excavations of the Kerhué-Bras
tumulus brought to light a sepulchral chamber which contained
thirty-three arrow-beads. Beneath other dolmens were picked up a number
of little plaques of slate, all pierced with holes; one of these pieces
of slate, which was oblong in form, bore on it a representation of a
sun with rays surrounded by ornaments not easy to make out. The Breton
megalithic monuments also contained numerous fragments of pottery, some
of which had formed part of vases without stands, such as those found
at Santorin and at Troy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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