CARMONA, a town of south-western Spain, in the province of Seville; 27 m. N.E. of Seville by rail. Pop. (1900) 17,215. Carmona is built on a ridge overlooking the central plain of Andalusia, from the Sierra Morena, on the north, to the peak of San Cristobal, on the south. It has a thriving trade in wine, olive oil, grain and cattle; and the annual fair, which is held in April, affords good opportunity of observing the costumes and customs of southern Spain. The citadel of Carmona, now in ruins, was formerly the principal fortress of Peter the Cruel (1350-1369), and contained a spacious palace within its defences. The principal entrance to the town is an old Moorish gateway; and the gate on the road to Cordova is partly of Roman construction. Portions of the ancient college of San Teodomir are of Moorish architecture, and the tower of the church of San Pedro is an imitation of the Giralda at Seville.
In 1881 a large Roman necropolis was discovered close to the town, beside the Seville road. It contains many rock-hewn sepulchral chambers, with niches for the cinerary urns, and occasionally with vestibules containing stone seats (triclinia). In 1881 an amphitheatre, and another group of tombs, all belonging to the first four centuries a.d., were disinterred near the original necropolis, and a small museum, maintained by the Carmona archaeological society, is filled with the mosaics, inscriptions, portrait-heads and other antiquities found here.
Carmona, the Roman Carmo, was the strongest city of Further Spain in the time of Julius Caesar (100-44 b.c.), and its strength was greatly increased by the Moors, who surrounded it with a wall and ornamented it with fountains and palaces. In 1247 Ferdinand III. of Castile took the city, and bestowed on it the motto Sicut Lucifer lucet in Aurora, sic in Wandalia Carmona (“As the Morning-star shines in the Dawn, so shines Carmona in Andalusia”).
For an account of the antiquities of Carmona, see Estudios arqueologicos e historicos, by M. Sales y Ferré (Madrid, 1887).
CARNAC, a village of north-western France, in the department of Morbihan and arrondissement of Lorient, 9 m. S.S.W. of Auray by road. Pop. (1906) 667, Carnac has a handsome church in the Renaissance style of Brittany, but it owes its celebrity to the stone monuments in its vicinity, which are among the most extensive and interesting of their kind (see [Stone Monuments]). The most remarkable consist of long avenues of menhirs or standing stones; but there is also a profusion of other erections, such as dolmens and barrows, throughout the whole district. About half a mile to the north-west of the village is the Menec system, which consists of eleven lines, numbers 874 menhirs, and extends a distance of 3376 ft. The terminal circle, whose longest diameter is 300 ft., is somewhat difficult to make out, as it is broken by the houses and gardens of a little hamlet. To the east-north-east there is another system at Kermario (Place of the Dead), which consists of 855 stones, many of them of great size—some, for example, 18 ft. in height —arranged in ten lines and extending about 4000 ft. in length. Still further in the same direction is a third system at Kerlescan (Place of Burning), composed of 262 stones, which are distributed into thirteen lines, terminated by an irregular circle, and altogether extend over a distance of 1000 ft. or more. These three systems seem once to have formed a continuous series; the menhirs, many of which have been broken up for road-mending and other purposes, have diminished in number by some thousands in modern times. The alignment of Kermario points to the dolmen of Kercado (Place of St Cado), where there is also a barrow, explored in 1863; and to the south-east of Menec stands the great tumulus of Mont St Michel, which measures 377 ft. in length, and has a height of 65 ft. The tumulus, which is crowned with a chapel, was excavated by René Galles in 1862; and the contents of the sepulchral chamber, which include several jade and fibrolite axes, are preserved in the museum at Vannes. About a mile east of the village is a small piece of moorland called the Bossenno, from the bocenieu or mounds with which it is covered; and here, in 1874, the explorations of James Miln, a Scottish antiquary, brought to light the remains of a Gallo-Roman town. The tradition of Carnac is that there was once a convent of the Templars or Red Cross Knights on the spot; but this, it seems, is not supported by history. Similar traces were also discovered at Mane Bras, a height about 3 m. to the east. The rocks of which these various monuments are composed is the ordinary granite of the district, and most of them present a strange appearance from their coating of white lichens. Carnac has an interesting museum of antiquities.
See W.C. Lukis, Guide to the Principal Chambered Barrows and other Prehistoric Monuments in the Islands of the Morbihan, &c. (Ripon, 1875); René Galles, Fouilles du Mont Saint Michel en Carnac (Vannes, 1864); A. Fouquet, Des monuments celtiques et des ruines romaines dans le Morbihan (Vannes, 1853); James Miln, Archaeological Researches at Carnac in Brittany: Kermario (Edinburgh, 1881); and Excavations at Carnac: The Bossenno and the Mont St Michel (Edinburgh, 1877).
CARNARVON, EARLDOM OF. The earldom of Carnarvon was created in 1628 for Robert Dormer, Baron Dormer of Wyng (c. 1610-1643), who was killed at the first battle of Newbury whilst fighting for Charles I., and it became extinct on the death of his son Charles, the 2nd earl, in 1709. From 1714 to 1789 it was held by the family of Brydges, dukes of Chandos and marquesses of Carnarvon, and in 1793 Henry Herbert, Baron Porchester (1741-1811), was created earl of Carnarvon.