Le cairn de Croaz Dom Herry et ses carrières de schiste (Saint-Nicolas-du-Pelem Côtes-d’Armor)

In 2005, a preventive archaeological diagnosis prior to the construction of a shopping centre led to the discovery of a funerary complex composed of a Middle Neolithic cairn, several burial mounds and a Bronze Age tumulus over a seven hectare area to the south of the village of Saint-Nicolas-du-Pélem (Côtes-d’Armor, France). A preventive excavation carried out in 2006 where the building project was located made it possible to study two quarries used during the Neolithic for the extraction of schist blocks and situated a few metres behind the remains of the cairn. The latter were then thoroughly examined during a research excavation in 2007 and 2008. The remains of the cairn exposed on this schist substratum were in a dominant position at the top of a natural elevation facing east, which is typical of the sites where these large Middle Neolithic monuments were usually built. The presence of two pits and pottery dating from Late Middle Age indicates that the monument, probably exploited as a quarry, was almost completely destroyed at the time, aggravated by the ensuing cultivation of the land. The current remains of the cairn, two or three stone courses high, delineate a north-south quadrangular plan, eight metres wide for an estimated original length of twenty metres or so. The absence of a soil sealed beneath the cairn suggests that the paleosol was completely removed and the outcrops of underlying schist partially levelled off prior to the construction of the cairn. Inside the cairn the layout of four funerary chambers can clearly be made out by the presence either of granite slabs broken by ploughing, with bases firmly anchored in the substratum, or by a completely empty bedding socket. The four chambers, placed next to one another, have the same shape, an almost circular design, three metres in diameter, with a short narrow passage on the eastern facade. The associated archaeological material is scarce and typical of the Middle Neolithic. It only consists of a few stone ornaments that have been analysed, a vase with a smooth wall and a few sherds. No bone remains have been found because of the high acidity of the schist bedrock. Several radiocarbon dates confirm that this type of monument with circular chambers and short passages, well known in coastal areas, dates to the end of the 5th millennium and the beginning of the 4th millennium. The Croaz Dom Herry cairn, a type of construction unknown in Central Brittany before this discovery, fills a gap between the north and south coasts of the peninsula

Archaeology · Excavation · Geography · Outcrop · Schist · Archaeological and Geological Studies · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geology · Paleontology · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

• Hommage à François Le Provost

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