514 Rude Stone Antiquities of Brittany. By Miss Russell. 



regards this one, which remained long in a partially destroyed 

 state very favourable to examination, and probably remains so 

 still, if it has not been damaged by the severe winters of late 

 years, this statement requires a curious modification ; the cairn 

 covered a house, but a doll's house, in solid stone, and tenanted 

 by ashes ! In the centre was a beehive cell, perhaps two feet 

 and a half in height, with six or seven smaller ones round it ; 

 the grieve or farm-bailiff who had reluctantly assisted at their 

 partial demolition, (the Society of Antiquaries interfered) testified 

 to their having contained ashes. If anything, this goes to show 

 that actual houses would not be erected as tombs. 



The cairns of Les Rochers are called sepulchres of the Early Iron 

 Age. In the dolmens, stone,bronze, and iron implements are found, 

 sometimes separately, sometimes all together, which is nottobe won- 

 dered at, when it is known that in the trenches of the old stronghold, 

 which it is now certain is the Alesia of Caesar and Vercingetorix, 

 stone, bronze, and iron weapons were found thoroughly mixed 

 together, from the top to the bottom of the excavations. N.B. 

 Vercingetorix is a Gaelic " Head-fighting-man-king." 



The manufactured articles of the dolmens on the whole are said 

 to resemble very closely those of the Swiss Lake-Dwellings. As 

 said before, human remains are rarely recorded as having been 

 found in the dolmens, and it is very unlikely that bones would 

 be taken away, and articles of household use left. At the same 

 time, the practice of burying the dead with their weapons and 

 ornaments especially, was too general for any such articles to 

 afford positive evidence on the sepulchre question. 



An interesting interment was found in one of the Eoche Guyon 

 dolmens, the skeleton of a man, with his possessions about him, 

 lying in a sort of stone box-bed off the main chamber. The 

 mound does not cover the dolmens in this case ; it only comes up 

 to the cover-stones, as in many other cases, so that air and light 

 could enter. One of the mounds at Les Rochers covers a dolmen, 

 but even in that the air is perfectly fresh. The Gavr Inis dolmen, 

 and I believe one near Carnac, are similarly covered, and there 

 seems nothing known of interments in either ; so the intermediate 

 theory, that the construction of the mound marked the conversion 

 of the dwelling house into the tomb, does not seem tenable. As 

 to the possibility of living in a stone hut covered by a mound — 

 the underground kitchen of a modern house is often the most 

 comfortable room in it. 



