Deux dolmens
MonumentHidden Treasure
Deux dolmens, located in Pont-Aven (Département 29), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Pont-Aven, Département 29, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.8984, -3.7890
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00090290
Enfouis dans les landes du Finistère, ces deux dolmens néolithiques de Pont-Aven défient les millénaires : tables de pierre colossales érigées il y a plus de 5 000 ans par des bâtisseurs dont l'audace nous stupéfie encore.
History
In the heart of the Pont-Aven region, famous for having inspired Gauguin's paintings, two silent dolmens tell a story that goes back much further than any painting. Rising out of the vegetation of southern Finistère, these megalithic monuments have been listed as Historic Monuments since 1951, and are part of the dense network of Neolithic burial sites that make Brittany one of Europe's richest regions for funerary archaeology. Each of these two dolmens has the characteristic structure of the corridor tombs or megalithic tables of the Armorican Neolithic: heavy slabs of local granite - an omnipresent rock in the Finistère subsoil - balanced on vertical supports with a precision that defies technical explanation. The raw strength and architectural sobriety of these ensembles give the site an atmosphere of contemplation and strangeness that the centuries have not erased. To visit these dolmens is to step out of linear time and into a dizzying human continuum. The Neolithic communities that built them practised incipient agriculture, mastered pottery and organised their deaths with a ritualistic care that presupposes elaborate beliefs. These collective burials probably contained the bones of venerated ancestors, deposited over generations in a dark, sacred chamber. The natural setting reinforces the power of the site. Pont-Aven and the surrounding area, irrigated by the River Aven, offer a green and tormented landscape where hedged farmland, moorland and granite outcrops blend together in a typically Armorican landscape. The proximity of a market town steeped in artistic history and a windswept Atlantic coastline amplifies the feeling of being at a crossroads of time. Whether you're an amateur archaeologist, a curious walker or just a resident of Finistère, a visit to these two dolmens is a pause for reflection: faced with these stones standing without mortar or metal, the question of what underpins a civilisation naturally arises, without the centuries having provided a definitive answer.
Architecture
The two dolmens at Pont-Aven belong to the Armorican megalithic tradition, characterised by the exclusive use of local granite, an abundant and exceptionally resistant rock that explains the survival of these structures over more than five millennia. Their radically sober architecture is based on a basic but impressive structural principle: orthostats - vertical slabs planted in the ground - support one or more horizontal tables (the covering slabs, sometimes called "tables"), forming an enclosed or semi-enclosed chamber. Based on the typical morphology of the dolmens of southern Finistère, these monuments could have a burial chamber accessible via a narrower entrance corridor, a pattern known as a "corridor dolmen", which prevailed in the region between 3,800 and 3,200 BC. The roof slabs, which could weigh several tonnes, were put in place using earthen ramps and wooden levers, using collective techniques that presuppose an advanced social organisation. The dark, low chamber inside was probably between two and four metres long and between one and one-and-a-half metres high, which is consistent with comparable dolmens found in neighbouring communes in Finistère. In the megalithic tradition, their location in the landscape is never accidental: these monuments were often oriented along significant solar axes (summer solstice or equinoxes), allowing light to enter the chamber at specific times of the year. This astronomical dimension, widely attested to in the great Breton complexes, gives these rough stone architectures a conceptual sophistication that their apparent roughness could mask.
Related Figures
Les communautés néolithiques du Finistère méridional (bâtisseurs anonymes, Ve-IIIe millénaire av. J.-C.)Prosper Mérimée (inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques, pionnier du recensement mégalithique breton au XIXe siècle)Paul du Châtellier (archéologue finistérien du XIXe siècle, fouilleur et inventorieur de nombreux dolmens du Finistère)Paul Gauguin (peintre ayant séjourné à Pont-Aven, contribuant à la notoriété de la commune et de son patrimoine)Le Dr Alexandre Bigot (géologue et préhistorien breton ayant documenté les mégalithes du Finistère au début du XXe siècle)
Tags
Nearby castles
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Deux dolmens located?
Deux dolmens is located in Pont-Aven, Département 29 department, Bretagne region, France.
Is Deux dolmens open to visitors?
Deux dolmens is currently closed to visitors.
