Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and UsesFergusson, James
History
Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses
Fergusson, James
Megalithic monuments
Numerous other Roman coins have been found in these French monuments,
but their testimony is disregarded. In the Manné er H'roëk, commonly
called the Butte de César, about half a mile south from Locmariaker,
near the surface, eleven medals of the Roman emperors, from Tiberius
to Trajan, were found, together with fragments of bronze, glass, and
pottery, but there were no signs of a secondary interment.[402] In like
manner, in another monument at Beaumont-sur-Oise, Roman moneys were
found, but, as M. Bertrand is careful to explain, in a stratum above
the stone and flint implements, which, of course, he believed to mark
the true date of the monument.[403] It seems impossible, however, that
all these Roman coins can have been accidentally placed there. Those of
Valentinian and Theodosius in the mound at New Grange were precisely in
the same position as those of Titus, Domitian, and Trajan in the Butte
de César or those of Beaumont, and so were those of Constantine found
at Uley, in Gloucestershire (_ante_, p. 165). Those of Valentinian at
Minning Lowe were in the tomb itself; so probably might others have
been found in the other tombs had they not previously been rifled. It
is not easy to assign a motive for placing these coins in the upper
part of the mound externally. Their being found in that position at
New Grange, Uley, Locmariaker, and Beaumont, is, however, sufficient
to prove it was not accidental, and their value is so small that they
could not have been buried there for concealment. They must have had
something to do with some funereal rite or superstition, the memory of
which has passed away. No ancient British or Gaulish coins have ever
been found in similar positions, and no Christian coins, which, had
their presence been purely accidental, would probably have been the
case. The inference seems to me inevitable that they were looked on as
valued relics or curiosities, and placed there intentionally by those
who raised the mounds it may be very long after the dates which the
coins bear.
DOLMENS.
There is nothing specific in the Rude Stone Monuments of France
sufficient to distinguish them from those of the other countries
we have been describing. They are larger, finer, and more numerous
there than in either Scandinavia or the British Isles, but except
in the negative peculiarity of there being no circles in France
there is little to distinguish the two groups. It can hardly even be
absolutely asserted that there are no circles in France. There are
some semicircles, which may possibly have been parts of circles never
completed; there are some rows of small stones around or on tumuli; but
certainly nothing that can for one moment be classed with the great
circles of Cumberland and Wiltshire, or those of Moytura and Stennis,
and certainly nothing like the innumerable Scandinavian examples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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