Megalithic monuments are defined essentially by the unusually large stones employed in their construction. The impressive dimensions have led to recurrent speculation as to how they were built. Popular histories and beliefs frequently attributed them to giants or other mythical beings. Dutch antiquarian Johan Picardt illustrated his Antiquiteten of Drenthe in 1660 with engravings showing giants engaged in the construction of one of the hunebedden of the northern Netherlands (Bakker 2010, 40–46). Later scholars, more soberly attributing them to human action, have nonetheless speculated on the precise methods used in their construction by societies lacking modern engineering equipment. Such speculation has concerned both the erection of the monuments – the raising upright of a menhir or orthostat, the building of a burial chamber or the addition of a mound – and the transport of the stones. The general consensus over the years has envisaged large teams of humans pulling on ropes aided by timber trackways, rollers or scaffolds, although waterborne transport has also been invoked on occasion (for the Stonehenge bluestones, or the Grand Menhir Brisé: Atkinson 1979; Le Roux 1997). Winter transport of megalithic blocks over ice or frozen ground has also been suggested for the monuments of northern Europe.
While speculation will continue to govern some elements of this debate, recent decades have seen new attention devoted to the direct evidence of constructional techniques afforded by the monuments themselves. This has included detailed observations of the surface of the megalithic blocks and the manner in which the raw materials were deployed. It has also extended to the sources of the stones and the quarries from which the blocks were extracted. A series of separate studies from the Portuguese Alentejo to Denmark and Sweden have revealed new evidence for the ways in which the materials were quarried and used (e.g. Dehn et al. 1991; Mens 2008; Martinez Torres et al. 2014; Richards et al. 2013). The incorporation of recycled elements has drawn attention to the multi-phase nature of many of these monuments, products of successive episodes of remodelling, extension and occasionally destruction. Hence despite the durability and scale of the materials used in megalithic monuments, they are increasingly understood as dynamic structures, continually in flux throughout their use-lives, with biographies furthermore that extend up to the present day.
Along with new interest in the constructional techniques has gone a new awareness of the social context in which these monuments were created. A number of scholars have emphasised the contingent and sometimes haphazard nature of the megalithic building project, arguing that the undertaking itself may have been more important than the finished product. At the same time, excavation evidence and structural analysis have revealed the level of skill required to build a megalithic tomb, and the repetitive features of the work that suggest regionally embedded traditions of knowledge, and perhaps expert builders.
The megalithic monuments of western Europe comprise tombs, stone settings and individual standing stones or menhirs. The study of megalithic tombs focused for many years on the funerary space, but enquiry has subsequently extended to the entirety of the monumental structure, including the mound ot cairn, and to its physical, chronological and human setting. In the light of new information acquired over the past 20 years it is timely to revisit the notion of the architectural project. In analysing the intentions that can be attributed to the Neolithic builders we must consider what evidence can be drawn from the construction process, and therefore from the building site. We must also ask what can be learned from the evidence of constructional sequences, and from the additions and modifications through which each generation reappropriated the unique significance of a specific site.
These “primitive” architectures may appear to be the outcome of a construction project as rudimentary, and a construction process as opportunistic, as the large slabs that they employed. That is clearly not the case. Each building project was unique. Detailed study can assess the architectural function or the manipulation of each element, and the reuse, secondary reworking and other successive modifications to which they were subjected. Along with the manner in which the materials were used, this reveals a store of knowledge that sometimes differed considerably from one structure to another, even between those of the same period within a single region. Reconstructing the building processes allows a better understanding, first, of the nature of these architectural projects, and second, of the purposes and uses for which they were intended.
What kinds of evidence and what tell-tale signs can document the progress and operation of megalithic building sites? What we can learn of the sequence or series of phases within each construction project and the intentions that lay behind it? Were these long-term building projects, undertaken by a small group of people during the slack season, or were they co-ordinated and continuous? If continuous, were shelters provided to accommodate the whole of the work force during the work? Or should we instead envisage periodic assemblies of people, enhancing the cohesion of the group through a collective undertaking that tied the individual into the wider community? The organisation of work at the building site must indirectly reflect the social organisation of the groups involved just as does the number of people whose bodies were deposited within the burial chambers, or whose bones were arranged and stored there. Speculative discussions have explored a wide range of possibilities, but material evidence that might allow more specific insights in individual cases remains relatively rare.
Participants in the “Megalithic architectures” conference visiting the megalithic tomb known as La Roche-aux-Fées at Essé (Ille-et-Vilaine) in May 2012.
It was to address these issues that a conference on the theme of “Megalithic Architectures” was held at the Musée de Bretagne at Rennes, from 10 to 12 May 2012. The first two days were devoted to conference presentations in the Champs Libres auditorium at the museum. Each presentation was recorded as an audio track, using the equipment and personnel that were kindly placed at our disposal. That was then synchronized with the corresponding Powerpoint slide show. The processing was undertaken by the company Mstream and made available on-line at the site http://emsg-rennes.jimdo.com/ The third and final day of the meeting was occupied by an excursion to sites in the region around Rennes including the dolmen angevin of La Roche-aux-Fées at Essé, the menhirs of Champ Dolent at Dol and La Tremblaye at Saint-Samson-sur-Rance, and the allée couverte of La Maison des Feins at Tressé. The papers in the present volume derive from those originally presented at this meeting.
The aim was to bring together speakers from as many of the relevant countries as possible, and to bridge the different national traditions of research. The resulting volume is organised in three sections that correspond to the major themes of the conference. The first presents a series of case studies from individual sites that reveal details of constructional techniques and also provide insight into the organisation of the building projects and the intentions of the builders. The second section broadens the spatial envelope to consider groups of sites and regional traditions; while the third section addresses chronological questions and special issues concerning the construction of these monuments. A fourth and final section brings together a famous non-European example and two summary papers reviewing the west European megalithic phenomenon as a whole from a northern and a southern perspective.
The editors are grateful first and foremost to the sponsors who provided financial and material support for the Rennes meeting: the Ministère de la Culture, the Région Bretagne, the Délégation régionale of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Observatoire de Rennes, the Université de Rennes 1, the Musée de Bretagne, the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme de Bretagne and Rennes Métropole. Thanks are also due to Florian Cousseau, Catherine Bizien-Jaglin and Catherine Louazel for their assistance with the organisation of the conference, and to the members of the UMR 6566 research team, and students, for their help during the meeting itself: Catherine Le Gall, Annie-Claude Granger, Francis Bertin, Laurent Quesnel, Manon Quillivic, Noisette Bec-Drelon, Aymeline Fonvieille, Hélène Pioffet and Adrien Delvoye. The editors also express their thanks to all those who have assisted in the preparation of this volume: Kate Sharpe, Emma Cunliffe, Miquel Molist and the late Magdalena Midgley. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Magdalena Midgley, whose premature death in July 2014 robbed European megalithic studies of one of its leading exponents.
References
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Bakker, J. A. 2010. Megalithic Research in the Netherlands, 1547–1911. From “Giant’s Beds” and “Pillars of Hercules” to accurate investigations. Sidestone Press: Leiden.
Dehn, W., Kalb, P. and Vortisch, W. 1991. Geologisch-Petrographische Untersuchungen an Megalithgräbern Portugals. Madrider Mitteilungen 32, pp. 1–28.
Le Roux, C.-T. 1997. Et voguent les menhirs? Bulletin d’Information de l’Association Manche-Atlantique pour la Recherche Archéologique dans les Iles 10, pp. 5–18.
Martínez-Torres, L. M., Fernández-Eraso, J., Mujika-Alustiza, J. Á., Rodrígeuz-Miranda, A. and Valle-Melón, J. M. 2014. Geoarchaeology and construction of the La Chabola de la Hechicera megalithic tomb, Elvillar, northern Spain. Geoarchaeology 29, pp. 300–311.
Mens, E. 2008. Refitting megaliths in western France. Antiquity 82, pp. 25–36.
Richards, C., Brown, J., Jones, S., Hall, A. and Muir, T. 2013. Monumental risk: megalithic quarrying at Staneyhill and Vestra Fiold, Mainland, Orkney. In: richards, C. Building the Great Stone Circles of the North. Windgather Press: Oxford, pp. 119–148.
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