Tumulus du Pey by Fontaine
The Tumulus du Pey von Fontaine (more correctly called Cairn du Pey von Fontaine or Cairn von l'Anguillé) is located in the village of Avrille , near Le Bernard in the Vendée department in France .
Some dolmens , menhirs and tumuli have been preserved in the Talmondais , a region in the southwest of the Vendée. Most, however, were destroyed in the 18th century. Its stones are used in the walls of houses or in the construction of the dam that protects the Sables d'Olonne from the sea. The tumulus, rediscovered in 1840 by Abbot Baudry, is the largest prehistoric monument in the department. In France, dolmen is the generic term for megalithic structures of all kinds (see: French nomenclature ).
Only a few panels have survived from the dolmen in the Tumulus du Tré du Pey in Fontaine, which was restored by Roger Joussaume between 1987 and 1992. The large cairn contained two gallery graves about 6000 years old with south-facing corridors about 20 m long. The corridor of an Allée couverte collapsed after the excavations. An excavation was carried out in 1933 and found ashes, some human bones, and pottery shards.
The tumulus served as a material depot when the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall were built in 1944 . In the late 1980s, polished axes , ornate pottery, jewelry, arrowheads, and Gallo-Roman coins were found.
The building dates from the middle Neolithic. The remains in the ruins of the old excavations suggest that the monument was reused in the early Neolithic and later and was visited in the Gallo-Roman period until the early Middle Ages .
literature
- Roger Joussaume: Le tumulus du Pey de Fontaine au Bernard (Vendée) . In: Gallia préhistoire 1999 Volume 41 No. 1 pp. 167-193
- Georges Lacouloumère, Marcel Baudouin: Les Mégalithes de Savatole, au Bernard (Vendée) In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique de France 4, 1907, pp. 371-387 ( full text ).
Web links
Coordinates: 46 ° 25 ′ 30.5 " N , 1 ° 25 ′ 53.3" W.