History
article | Reading time5 min
Discover the fascinating history of this extraordinary megalithic monument!
the origins of the site
Do you know the history of this thousand-year-old site overlooking the Bay of Morlaix?
The great Barnenez cairn is an exceptional megalithic monument erected almost 6,000 years ago during the Neolithic period, a period of recent prehistory corresponding to the arrival of agriculture, the domestication of animals and the first houses.
It was at this time that man began to make his mark on the landscape, with some remarkable features being the subject of ostentatious funerary constructions skilfully built to last.
The Barnenez cairn was saved from destruction in extremis more than 50 years ago, when quarrying revealed the back of four burial chambers to the west of the monument. After work was halted, archaeological digs revealed a total of 11 funerary chambers with corridors embedded in the mass of dry stone that makes up the large cairn, 70 m long and almost 8 m high.
Pierre-Roland Giot, who directed the excavations in the 1960s, saw a first cairn on the east side, comprising chambers G to J, against which a second cairn comprising chambers A to F would have been built on the west side.
Christian Gluckman / Centre des monuments nationaux
A complex history
New studies based on building archaeology methods are now revealing a more complex history, which can be summed up in three main phases:
- Firstly, a small necropolis made up of small independent round burial mounds with one or two corridor chambers.
- In a second phase, these small monuments were grouped together to form two long burial mounds (one with chambers A to F, the other with chambers G to J), with the existing corridors initially lengthened and new chambers added. The orientation of the façades of these two long monuments is not the same, giving an overall flared V shape. An initial play of colour distinguishes the two façades, with a darker predominance (mostly dolerite) on the west side, and a lighter predominance (mostly granite) on the east side.
- In the final stage, the whole structure was joined together to form the large cairn as it stands today, with the corridors lengthened and the façade regularised. At this point, the colour scheme was reversed, with the lighter dominant colour on the west side and the darker dominant colour on the east side.
The evolution of megalithic funerary monuments, of which Barnenez is an outstanding example, spans several hundred years and is the result of symbolic changes in the treatment of the dead chosen to form part of these permanent structures.
This can also be seen in the architectural choices made for the rooms, some of which feature a vaulted construction with small stones, others with slabs and megalithic pillars, and some with a mixture of the two.
DR, Centre des monuments nationaux