La France des dolmens et des sepultures collectives (4500-2000 avant J.-C.).

RENFREW, COLIN

PHILIPPE SOULIER (ed.). La France des dolmens et des sepultures collectives (4500-2000 avant J.-C.) 336 pages, b/w figures. 1998. Paris: Errance; 2-87772-157-4 paperback FF295.

These four volumes testify to the continuing focus upon what German scholars, I believe, originally termed `Megalithismus', a term clearly now embraced with enthusiasm in the latin languages. In the 19th century scholars such as Fergusson assumed that such `Rude Stone Monuments' had something in common wherever they might be found, from northern Europe to north Africa, from Iberia to the Levant and indeed beyond. From the second half of the 20th century it was realized that the chambered tombs of western Europe (including those of Germany and Scandinavia) form an approximately continuous zone, and might well be considered a unitary phenomenon, both geographically and chronologically, despite their long duration. It seems curious, then, to find a wider spatial compass in Megalithismes, with papers by Tara Steimer & Frank Braemer on `Monuments funeraires megalithiques au proche-orient', and by Roger Joussaume on `Ethiopie: dolmens du Harrar et traditions des steles'. They serve to remind us, as might other such contributions focused upon other parts of the world, that construction of monuments from large stones is not restricted to the Neolithic of northwestern Europe. But unless a broad framework of comparative ethnography is intended, it is difficult to see the purpose of including them with the European studies.

One fascinating, if confusing, feature of these four collective volumes is that several academic traditions are simultaneously at work. There are typological studies of the traditional kind, where the monuments are considered in terms of their plans as drawn by the modern archaeological draughtsman. There are grand syntheses, seeking to gather up all the megaliths of Europe in their scope, and there are particularistic studies where individual monuments are studied with care, sometimes set in a well-considered and wider archaeological context.

The most straightforward, and the most coherent in its approach, is La France des dolmens, which, after a brief introduction by the editor, undertakes a survey of the French dolmens and collective tombs on a region-by-region basis, with 20 regions of France listed alphabetically. The text is in French. Soulier's introductory map, based on the national DRACAR database, indicates well over 3000 megalithic monuments in France. The successive chapters document their great variety. Since the earliest radiocarbon dates for such sites still appear to come from Brittany, the chapter on Brittany by Charles-Tanguy Le Roux is a point of departure for discussion, but it is a concise note of nine pages, and cannot deal with underlying issues. For the British reader, or indeed for the international reader influenced by recent British syntheses, this picture offers a healthy antidote to our insular preoccupations. It reminds us that the centre of gravity of the French distribution is in the south: the Aveyron has 725 monuments, and Lot has 551. Yet the variety and profusion of these monuments, while putting the much scantier British showing in its place, does serve also as an invitation to what one may term a `megalithismatic' approach, where the phenomenon of megalith building becomes divorced somewhat from the settlements and other manifestations of the societies and communities which built them.

The two volumes edited by Jean Guilaine (with the texts in French) are the product of a seminar held at the College de France. The approach is again primarily a regional one (restricted, apart from the unexpected excursus to the Near East and Ethiopia noted above) to the megalithic monuments of France. They indicate the high quality of recent excavations and fieldwork. Le Roux in the 1999 volume (on Brittany in the 5th and 4th millennia BC) and several authors in the 1998 volume (notably Nicolas Cauwe on collective tombs from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic, Henri Duday & Patrice Courtaud on the Mesolithic cemetery at La Vergne (Charente-Maritime), Christian Jeunesse on Danubian funerary practices and societies and Christine Boujot & Serge Cassen on Carnacean tumuli and long mounds) focus well upon the early phases of megalithic burial in France. As Le Roux points out, the work of Boujot & Cassen has re-opened the possibility that the massive Breton long mounds (`tertres') with totally enclosed chambers, first studied at Carnac, might be earlier than the first passage-graves, hitherto widely considered to be the first chambered tombs of Brittany and hence of Europe.

These three works perform a valuable service in illustrating the wealth of relevant French material, and of the high quality of the research currently conducted in France. For a wider perspective it is, however, necessary to turn to the massive (860-page) proceedings of the Santiago de Compostela conference of 1996. This in turn helps to rectify the geographical balance, giving due weight at last to the megaliths of Iberia. These were largely omitted from the recent syntheses of Hodder and then of Sherratt, where a Danubian Neolithic influence (and the local reactions to that influence) were seen as the motivating force for the development of megalithic burial in Europe. Yet it has never been clear how this thesis might apply to the various and numerous megalithic tombs of Iberia, nor indeed, if Brittany has priority, how Breton influences were transmitted.

The first section is devoted to historiography and methodology, and begins with a well-judged introduction by Jean Guilaine. (The text in each case is in the native language of the author, with a convenient resume in Spanish and in English at the head of each chapter.) The second section is devoted to northwestern Europe (i.e. Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and Germany, with an excursus to the Caucasus), where a further broadly synthetic paper by Elizabeth Shee Twohig is notable. The third section is devoted to France, with chapters by a number of authors who subsequently contributed to the volumes edited by Guilaine, noted above. In addition there is a useful overview by Jean L'Helgouac'h in which he expresses the view that Neolithic cultures were established on the Armorican coastline several centuries before the construction there of megalithic burial chambers. The early closed monuments (tertres) co-existed with the open monuments (including passage graves). The tertres with their rich burial goods are seen as the burial places of important chiefs or dignitaries. Hence significant social stratification is seen at the outset of the megalithic phenomenon in Brittany.

It is the next three sections which form the heart of this volume, more than half its length, and, appropriately for a publication celebrating a conference in northern Spain, at last rectify the balance in favour of Iberia. Most of these are regional studies. At least two (by Carlos Tavares da Silva, on early Neolithic and megalithic origins in south Portugal, and by Joaquina Soares, on the transition towards Neolithic social formations on the southeast Portuguese coast) by implication see local megalithic origins, while recognizing an eastern source for the domesticates upon which the Neolithic economy was based.

The seventh and final section (`Society, Art and Ritual') contains articles on a number of interesting themes, some of them relating to megalithic art. Notable among them is the paper by Nicolas Cauwe, also a contributor to the works edited by Guilaine, in which the Mesolithic roots of the megalithic collective tombs are emphasized. This section makes an appropriately open-ended conclusion to the whole volume, for in it we find a number of case-studies giving well-documented insights into the burial customs of the Atlantic Neolithic. Yet it seems clear that many of the basic questions remain unanswered, and in particular the relationship (if there is any) between the megalithic architecture of Iberia and that of France remains unresolved. The deficiency in the discussions of the megalithic phenomenon here is the lack of any serious treatment of Scandinavia, but that can hardly be a reproach in a conference dedicated to the Atlantic Neolithic.

Overall these four volumes emphasize how rich the material is, and how well-conducted surveys and excavations are adding to our understanding of the megalithic architecture of each region. Only in a few cases, however, do we find the burial monuments set within the wider Neolithic landscape, or the relationship clarified between the occupations of the living and the repose of the dead.

The central mystery remains. Why was it in western and northwestern Europe, and only in those regions, that the phenomenon of megalithic burial developed and prospered so mightily? The few cases documented for such practices elsewhere in the world only serve to emphasize the far grander scale of the European manifestation. And I am still intrigued by the problem of origins, although many authors in these volumes rightly deal with other questions altogether. Most authors here would, I guess, see separate megalithic origins in Iberia, Brittany and Scandinavia -- for certainly no-one is here arguing for active contacts between these areas at the early time in question. Some authors argue for local Mesolithic antecedents, and the accumulating documentation of this view is particularly useful. Others attempt to show the chronological priority of the Neolithic economy, and here the documentation and dating is now much fuller than it was a decade ago. But why and how should the advent of farming produce the phenomenon of megalithic burial quite independently in at least three regions of Europe? No-one here is so brave as to suggest that the Mesolithic antecedents seen in one or other region were already so well established generally throughout western and northwestern Europe that the separate coming of the farming economy in each of these regions could be expected to produce megalithic architecture through the widespread and universal influence of those widespread Mesolithic collective burial practices.

It is now at least 40 years since the impact of radiocarbon dating, especially in Brittany, brought about a revolution in our understanding of the European megaliths, clearly implying their independence from architectural traditions in the east Mediterranean. That point now seems universally accepted. But beyond that the situation seems as confused as it was 40 years ago. But if the picture is confused at the level of continental synthesis, it is becoming progressively clearer at the local and regional level. The high quality of the work reported in these four volumes is eloquent testimony to that. The pieces of the jigsaw (if one may use that rather misleading analogy) are being meticulously dusted off and fitted together. Yet the big picture remains obstinately obscure.

COLIN RENFREW, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER, England.