In Search of French Megalithic Sites
Submitted by AlexHunger on Tuesday, 07 June 2005 Page Views: 16369
Neolithic and Bronze AgeCountry: France
The first task was to organize how this would be done. We divided the French e-gallery into the 19 basic regions in France. We also set up codes for the 95 departments in France for logging sites. We already knew that Brittany had a lot of dolmen and Menhirs, but wanted to make sure we gave all the others in the rest of France the proper care and respect.
Then came an intensive period of researching all available resources. There were a number of websites, where we could get regional lists of megaliths, not to mention the Official French Merimee. This was entered into spreadsheets that could eventually be loaded en-masse directly into the database.
After this we sourced as many French maps as possible in 1/25,000 and 1/100,000 in order to locate the sites we already knew about and to discover others from the surveys. IGN made this easy in a couple of regions like Brittany, Corsica and Isle de France (Paris) where they published CD Roms for us to get coordinates from to input GPS positions into the spread sheets.
The Captain quickly collected 1,000 Brittany sites within weeks this way, which highly motivated us to keep going. The rest of France required more thorough research. I often sat with my IGN maps and approximated the megalith symbol as accurately as possible with the electronic map from my GPS software. So far, I think I have spent about €800 on maps, not to mention the GPS for my field work. In other cases, where there was no symbol available, research on individual town’s websites, amateur web photos became neccessary.
Though this often resulted in hits, at other times we would satisfy ourselves with a “Near” when we could at least pin-point the right field, as many French areas are called “Lieu dits de xxxx.” When you have the “Dolmen de xxxx” you know that you are on the right track with an acceptable margin of error for line of sight recognition. In the remaining cases, when all avenues had been exhausted, we simply marked the site as “vil” meaning the location was accurate to the nearest village. In due course, we will be able to determine the exact position of these megaliths, or close the file on it if it has been destroyed.
A recent trip to the Loire-Atlantique confirmed that the location accuracy for a site scaled from a map is good to within 200 Meters. A "Near" can be about 1 Kilometer off, while a site to the nearest village can be up to 4 Kilometers off.
We have so far filed about 3,550 sites in western France and will soon add the last 350 or so in eastern and southern France, which are in the final stages of being processed. The Captain estimates that the true total of sites could climb as high as 7,000. With what has been added to the Megalithic Map so far, you can see distinct patterns, with massive concentrations in Brittany and the region between Paris and Normandy, arcing down towards Lanquedoc and then swinging across to the Cote D’azur.
North eastern France appears to be relatively sparsely populated with megaliths. Further research will reveal whether this and other blank spots in Aquitaine had something to do with them not being built in the first place, the erosion of softer stone or more systematic destruction over the last 1,600 years.
The Americans always say God helps those who help themselves. The Captain has taken the spreadsheet and a 6 month sabbatical to hunt down as many stones as possible in his new camper. [He's still out there somewhere, we hope for a report soon - Ed] I will also systematically use some of my holidays to photograph French megalithic sites, while also looking at what else the EU has to offer.
We hope the site listings will encourage others, particularly natives, to photograph these sites for themselves. In due course we might offer French and German Language welcome portals to the site. The more pictures of new sites, the better.
While we appear to have Malta pretty much covered and Germany is progressing well, future plans include a similar systematic inventory of sites in Italy, Spain and Portugal, with a good start already having been made in Croatia and a couple of other interesting individual sites in Eastern Europe as well as Egypt. At this point we still need better maps and GPS software to cover Greece, Eastern Europe and the middle east. There are of course political and economic limitations in this.
I think we can honestly say that we hope that increasing awareness of these wonderful stones will improve their chance of being preserved for future generations for all mankind. Failing that, we will at least have a good photographic record and some healthy outdoor activity.
*** To see their many thousands of site listings, go to our new Megalith Map and head for France. You can't miss it! Thanks are also due to a number of other European contributors including Jan and Jan (x2), Bernard and many others
Note: Alex has just contributed data on 350 more sites from Eastern France and Southern Germany, now plotted on our main map. Can you help us track down and photograph them?
We would like to know more about this location. Please feel free to add a brief description and any relevant information in your own language.
Wir möchten mehr über diese Stätte erfahren. Bitte zögern Sie nicht, eine kurze Beschreibung und relevante Informationen in Deutsch hinzuzufügen.
Nous aimerions en savoir encore un peu sur les lieux. S'il vous plaît n'hesitez pas à ajouter une courte description et tous les renseignements pertinents dans votre propre langue.
Quisieramos informarnos un poco más de las lugares. No dude en añadir una breve descripción y otros datos relevantes en su propio idioma.