Megalithic Tombs

are one of the most widespread and conspicuous landscape monuments of the western European Neolithic. The term “megalithic” itself is derived from the Greek words “lithos” meaning stone and “megas” or “large.” They are thus in essence large stone monuments, but by extension “megalithic tomb” is often used to refer to all Neolithic chambered tombs of western Europe, including those where construction was in dry-stone walling or timber. Recent excavations at Haddenham in Cambridgeshire showed that the timber elements in nonstone chambered tombs could themselves be of great size, and the term “megaxylic” (“large timber”) was proposed to refer to these, but so far this has not found general acceptance in the archaeological literature.

The variety of monuments comprised within the category of megalithic tombs is enormous, ranging from simple box-like burial chambers beneath small circular mounds to enormous mounds with multiple passages and chambers such as Knowth in Ireland or Barnenez in Brittany. Furthermore, the tombs form part of a larger tradition of western European prehistoric monuments, which also includes standing stones, stone circles, and in Britain, henges and cursus monuments. This monumentalism is a key feature of the western European Neolithic and suggests some conscious attempt on the part of these early societies to create a cultural landscape of conspicuously visible humanly made structures.

Among the immense variability of megalithic tombs a number of key types have been identified. One of the earliest and most widespread is the passage grave, where the burial chamber under its covering mound of earth or stones is reached by a passage starting from the edge of the mound. This design allowed continued access to the chamber long after the mound was completed, although in many cases the passage was low and narrow and could be negotiated only by crawling through it. Examples of the passage grave type are found in most of the regions where megalithic tombs were built, including Iberia, France, the British Isles, and southern Scandinavia, but in addition to the passage graves each region possesses other types of megalithic tomb. In France, there are the allées couvertes, or gallery graves, consisting of an elongated burial chamber reached by a short vestibule. In Ireland, there are court cairns, where long curved arms extend from one end of the mound to enclose an unroofed courtyard. In northern Europe, there are the dysser, in which the chamber is a simple stone compartment beneath the mound, without any means of entry from the outside. In most regions there are additionally other kinds of Neolithic mounded tomb such as the unchambered long mound or round mound; these unchambered monuments, properly speaking, fall outside the category of megalithic tombs, although it is clear they are a related phenomenon.

One of the most interesting findings from work on megalithic tombs over the past fifty years has been the realization that most are not single-phase structures of unitary design but the result of many separate episodes of building, modification, and addition. The form of the monument as it appears today is often the final outcome of a process extending over several centuries. A good example of this is the tomb known as Wayland's Smithy in southern Britain. This is a megalithic tomb with a burial chamber of cruciform plan at one end of an elongated mound. The entrance to the passage leading to the burial chamber is in the center of one end of the mound, flanked by large upright stones that create a ceremonial facade. This associated facade is the most conspicuous of the surviving structures but represents only the latest phase of the monument. The original structure consisted of a timber mortuary house containing the bones of fourteen to seventeen individuals. Subsequently, the mortuary house was allowed to decay and the remains covered by an oval mound. At a later stage this was incorporated in the monument that we see today, the oval mound being entirely hidden within the long mound and a separate megalithic passage grave built at one end.

Origins and Chronology

Until the advent of radiocarbon dating in the 1950s conventional wisdom placed most megalithic tombs in the late third or early second millennium b.c., or in some cases even later; in the 1920s, the allée couverte of Tressé in Normandy was attributed by its excavator to the Iron Age (first millennium b.c.). At that time, many prehistorians considered megalithic tombs to be derived from the eastern Mediterranean or Aegean region, and the corbel vaults of Newgrange in Ireland and Maes Howe in Scotland were traced back to Mycenaean forebears such as the famous Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae itself.

The first radiocarbon dates quickly demonstrated that the western European megalithic tombs were much older than their supposed Aegean antecedents, and the hypothesis of an eastern Mediterranean origin was replaced by theories of independent development. These new dates placed the earliest megalithic tombs in the fourth millennium b.c., and with the calibration of the radiocarbon chronology the oldest dates have been pushed back to around 4800 B.C. in calendar years. This makes them the oldest monumental architecture in the world. Radiocarbon dates have also enabled the chronology of the different varieties of megalithic tomb to be fixed, and have shown that megalithic tombs were still being built and used around 2500 B.C. in Ireland and certain regions of France. The use of megalithic tombs has thus been shown to extend over a period of more than 2,000 years.

The earliest reliably dated tombs are the passage graves of northwestern France, although it is likely that megalithic tombs in certain regions of Portugal belong to approximately the same period. Most theories of origin place particular emphasis on the geographical distribution of the tombs, especially that of apparently early types such as passage graves. Their distribution along the Atlantic margin of Europe suggests that maritime contacts, perhaps between sea-fishing communities, may have played a part in the genesis and dissemination of the concept. This idea gains support from the discovery of collective graves containing the skeletons of up to six individuals in the mesolithic shell middens of Téviec and Hoëdic off the southern coast of Brittany. The practice of collective burial, which is such a widespread feature of western European chambered tombs, could well have arisen from such modest mesolithic origins.

The concept of the mound may have been a response to the social changes connected with the adoption of a new economy or ideology at the beginning of the Neolithic Period. It has been argued that pressure from farming groups spreading across northern France from the east could, in turn, have led to pressure on land and resources in Brittany, stimulating the construction of monumental tombs that acted as territorial markers. Other arguments place the emphasis not on economic change but on the ideology of the longhouse. Longhouses of massive timber construction were a key feature of early framing communities in central Europe, and are thought to have been translated into long mounds for burials by the early farming communities of northern and northwestern Europe. Long mounds are found in northern France as far west as Brittany, and some have argued that it was from these long mounds that all other varieties of mounded tomb, including the passage graves, were derived. This hypothesis fails to account for the early development of megalithic tombs in Iberia, however, where neither long mounds nor longhouses were present. For this reason it remains probably that megalithic tombs derived their origin, in part at least, from local Mesolithic burial traditions.

Usage and Meaning

Megalithic tombs consist of two principal components: the burial chamber and the covering mound, or barrow. A third element sometimes found is a court or forecourt. There is some evidence to suggest how these elements were used, although usage must have varied considerably from generation to generation and from one region to another.

The principal burial place was the chamber, although burials sometimes were also placed in the passage. At the Hazleton long mound in southern Britain burials had been placed in the passage only after access to the chamber beyond had been blocked by collapse, so in this case the passage appears to have served as an overflow. The predominant practice in megalithic tombs was that of collective burial, in which remains of up to 350 individuals were placed together in the same tomb. Grave goods were usually few, and most of the bones had become disarticulated. In some tombs there was evidence that the bodies had first been buried or exposed elsewhere, and it was only the cleaned and disarticulated bones that were placed in the chamber; in other cases, entire bodies were introduced, and any disarticulation was the result of later disturbance after they had decomposed.

The presence of an entrance or passage was clearly designed to allow repeated access to the burial chamber over a period of decades or centuries, and evidence shows that earlier burials were sometimes displayed to make way for new interments. There are also indications that in some tombs the bones had been sorted into categories, such as long bones or skulls, which were grouped together in particular areas of the chamber. This suggests that not only may new burials have been introduced via the passage, but selected bones from existing interments may have been extracted for use in cults or ceremonies. Such ceremonies, perhaps involving offerings to the dead, may have taken place in the courts or forecourts.

The monumentality of the tombs suggests that the bodies placed in them were of great importance to the communities that built the tombs. A suggestion that has gained broad acceptance is that the tombs drew their significance from being the resting place of the ancestors. In many small-scale societies an individual derives the right to use of the land from his or her lineal descent from the ancestors. The burial mounds may therefore have symbolized ancestral right to land, and this line of reasoning can help to explain why the burial mound is often much larger than would be needed simply to cover the burial chamber itself.

Social Context

A number of exercises, both paper and practical, have attempted to calculate the work effort involved in the construction of a megalithic tomb. This includes quarrying and transport of the stone, construction of the chamber and other structures on site, and completion of the mound. These exercises have shown that it would have been within the capability of a small-scale community of some few dozen persons to build one of the smaller tombs, but that construction of a large tomb such as Knowth, in Ireland, where there are two long and heavily decorated passage graves beneath a mound over 200 feet (60 m) in diameter, would have required the cooperation of a large number of individuals, from several different communities. The fact that, in general, the larger tombs belong to the later stages of megalithic tombs could be related to the development of increasingly hierarchical societies, where power was concentrated more and more in the hands of a ruling elite. Thus what we may be witnessing is a transition from a landscape of relatively egalitarian communities, each with their ancestral monument, to a more hierarchical organization where burial mounds are fewer, larger, and concentrated in emerging centers of power, such as the Boyne Valley or Orkney mainland.

Not all regions exhibit such a hierarchical progression, however, and there is evidence that even in the third millennium b.c. some of the tombs were still being shared by a small number of families who chose to bury their dead in a communal burial place. The allée couverte of La Chaussée-Tirancourt in northeastern France contains two distinct layers of burial separated by an intentional deposit of chalk. Genetic abnormalities in the bones show that the same families were burying in particular areas within the tomb in both layers. This suggests that these families retained rights to their own specific part of the chamber throughout the life of the tomb.

Megalithic Art

An intriguing feature of some megalithic tombs is the presence of designs carved into the surface of the stones. These designs, known as “Megalithic art,” are found in tombs along the Atlantic margin of Europe from Iberia to the Orkney Islands but are especially common in Ireland. In the great Boyne Valley tombs such as Knowth and Newgrange, decorated stones occur both in the slab-built curbs that encircle the base of the burial mounds and on the stones of the passage and chamber. In addition to pecked designs, traces of painted decoration have been found on certain Portuguese tombs. It is unclear whether this kind of decoration is a local Portuguese phenomenon, or whether it was originally much more widespread and survived only in the warmer Portuguese climate.

A wide variety of motifs, both representational and abstract, are present in Megalithic art. They may be divided chronologically into three principal phases. In the first phase (ca. 4800–4000 B.C.), the art appears to be restricted to Brittany and consists of motifs that are schematic but representational rather than purely abstract, as in later phases. Motifs include axes, hafted axes, crooks, and crosses. They are found on menhirs and on simple passages graves. (See Statue-Menhirs.)

The second phase coincides with the period when the classic passage graves were being built (4000–3500 B.C. or possibly as late as 3200 B.C.). The art is now more widespread, being found in Iberia, France, and the British Isles, and in contrast to the preceding period the principal art motifs are nonrepresentational, consisting of abstract curves, circles, spirals, and meanders, often in closely spaced concentric patterns. This kind of art is represented most spectacularly at Gavrinis, a passage grave on a small island in the Gulf of Morbihan in southern Brittany, but by far the greatest number is found in the passage graves of the Boyne Valley.

Finally, the third phase is marked by a return to a greater regional variation in Megalithic art. The best-known examples are from northern France, where representational elements become dominant once more. Certain of the motifs seem to be anthropomorphic: necklaces and paired breasts in Brittany and anthropomorphic outlines on the walls of rock-cut tombs in the Marne region. These might be the first representations of spirits or supernatural beings in northwestern Europe since the end of the last Ice Age.

The presence of Megalithic art in different regions suggests some measure of interregional contact and cultural sharing. Under certain circumstances, however, identical artistic motifs may be developed by different societies entirely in isolation. This is the alternative possibility presented by recent writers seeking to demonstrate the entoptic nature of the designs involved. Entoptic motifs are a universal product of the human psyche in certain altered states of consciousness, such as trances induced by narcotics or other intoxicants. The abstract patterns that are seen in these circumstances are the same irrespective of cultural or social background. If it is accepted that some megalithic art consists of entoptic motifs, then we need not expect to find direct cultural contacts between the regions using this art. Any specific parallels would be indicative not of cultural contact between these regions, but would stem instead from the origin of these motifs in universal characteristics of the human psyche.

The possibility that trance-inducing substances were used in these societies is strengthened by the discovery in a number of French Neolithic burial chambers of fragments of ceramic incense burners. These may have been designed for the inhalation of a narcotic such as opium. Together with the evidence of sorting and manipulation of the bones this provides tantalizing indications of the kinds of ritual practiced in and around megalithic tombs.

Megaliths Worldwide

Although the best-known Megalithic tombs are those in Europe, it should be noted that monuments of a similar character and construction are found in other parts of the world, including southern India, the Caucasus, Madagascar, and parts of South America. The use of large stone blocks to create a tomb chamber appears thus to have been adopted independently by a number of human societies at different times in the past.[See also British Isles: Prehistory of the British Isles; Burial and Tombs; Europe: The European Neolithic Period; Stone Circles and Alignments.]

Bibliography and More Information about Megalithic Tombs

• J. D. Lewis-Williams and T. A. Dowson, On Vision and Power in the Neolithic: Evidence from the Decorated Monuments, Current Anthropology 34 (1993): 55–65.
• J.-P. Mohen, The World of Megaliths (1989).
• C. Renfrew, ed., The Megalithic Builders of Western Europe (1983).
• E. Shee Twohig, The Megalithic Art of Western Europe (1981).

Chris Scarre