There are many fine examples in Brittany of the corridor-tomb with distinct chamber. The best known lies on the island of Gavr'inis (Morbihan). It is covered by a tumulus nearly 200 feet in diameter. The circular chamber, 6 feet in height, is roofed by a huge block measuring 13 feet by 10. The corridor which leads out to the edge of the mound is 40 feet in length. Twenty-two of the upright blocks used in this tomb are almost entirely covered with engraved designs. These are massed together with very little order, the main object having been apparently to cover the whole surface of the stone with ornament. The designs consist of spirals, concentric circles and semicircles, chevrons, rows of strokes, and triangles, and bear a considerable resemblance to those of Lough Crew and New Grange in Ireland.
Another tomb in the same district, that of Mané-er-Hroeck, was intact when discovered in 1863. It contained within its chamber a hoard of 101 axes of fibrolite and jadeite, 50 pebbles of a kind of turquoise known as callaïs, pieces of pottery, flints, and a peculiarly fine celt of jadeite together with a flat ring-shaped club-head of the same stone. The tomb was concealed by a huge oval mound more than 100 yards in length. The famous Mont S. Michel is an artificial mound containing a central megalithic chamber and several smaller cists, some of which held cremated bodies.
| Fig. 11.
Chambered mound at Fontenay-le-Marmion, Normandy. (After Montelius, Orientund Europa.) |
A very remarkable mound in Calvados (Fig. 11) was found to contain no less than twelve circular corbelled chambers, each with a separate entrance passage. The megalithic tombs of Brittany all belong to the late neolithic period, and contain tools and arrow-heads of flint, small ornaments of gold, callaïs, and pottery which includes among its forms the bell-shaped cup.
In Central and South France the allées couvertes are mostly of a semi-subterranean type, i.e. they are cut in the ground and merely roofed with slabs of stone. The most famous is that of the Grotte des Fées near Arles (Fig. 12), in which a passage (a) with a staircase at one end and two niches (b b) in its sides leads into a narrow rectangular chamber (c). The total length is nearly 80 feet. Another tomb of the same type, La Grotte du Castellet, contained over a hundred skeletons, together with thirty-three flint arrow or spear-heads, one of which was stuck fast in a human vertebra, a bell-shaped cup, axes of polished stone, beads and pendants of various materials, 114 pieces of callaïs, and a small plaque of gold.
