Dolmen dit de La Pierre Levée
MonumentHidden Treasure
Sentinel of stone standing at the gates of Brantôme, this Neolithic dolmen, listed as early as 1889, reveals a majestic capstone resting upon its orthostats, a raw and striking remnant of a humanity five millennia old.
History
In the heart of the Périgord Vert region, where the River Dronne winds its way between limestone cliffs and dense forests, the dolmen known as La Pierre Levée have stood guard over the lands of Brantôme for over five thousand years. Long before the Benedictine monks founded their famous abbey, long before Pepin the Short gave these lands to Christianity, men from the Neolithic period erected a soberly majestic funerary monument here, irreplaceable testimony to the prehistory of the Périgord. What sets La Pierre Levée apart from ordinary megaliths is its remarkable state of preservation in a landscape shaped by centuries of agriculture and urbanisation. The massive, slightly sloping roof slab rests on a number of vertical uprights - the orthostats - the erection of which required a collective mastery of lifting techniques that still commands the admiration of archaeologists today. The stone itself, a local oolitic limestone typical of the Périgord region, has a golden patina that complements the warm colours of the region. Visiting the dolmen is an experience of absolute simplicity: there is no sculpted decoration, no inscriptions, no artifice. The emotion is born of silence and excess, of this intimate confrontation between modern man and the intelligence of his Neolithic ancestors. We try to imagine the original burial chamber, probably covered by a tumulus of earth and stones that has since disappeared, and the collective rites that took place there. The surrounding setting adds to the power of the place. Brantôme, nicknamed the "Venice of Périgord" for its canals and troglodytic abbey, provides an exceptional architectural backdrop to this prehistoric monument. The combination, in such a small area, of a Neolithic dolmen listed as a Historic Monument and a medieval abbey founded in the 8th century, testifies to the extraordinary density of heritage in the north of the Dordogne.
Architecture
The dolmen at La Pierre Levée belong to the category of simple single-chamber dolmens, the most common type in Périgord and south-west France in general. Its structure is based on the principle of inverted corbelled architecture: several orthostats - slabs standing vertically - form the walls of the burial chamber, while one or more horizontal covering tables complete the arrangement by covering the whole. The local oolitic limestone, with its creamy, golden hues typical of the Périgord Blanc region, is the only material used for the building, quarried from natural outcrops near the site. The roof slab, the centrepiece and the element that gives this type of monument its vernacular name of "raised stone", has significant dimensions, estimated to be between two and three metres long and around a metre and a half wide. Its thickness, in the region of forty to sixty centimetres, gives it considerable mass, which ensures the stability of the whole by the effect of its weight alone. The inner chamber, sub-rectangular in plan, was initially closed at one end by a chevet slab and opened at the other by an access facing - presumably towards the east, in line with practices observed at other dolmens in the département. The entire monument was originally encased in a cairn or tumulus of dry stone and earth, of which only scattered traces remain today around the orthostats. The disappearance of the original mound gives the dolmen its current appearance of a bare stone skeleton, which is striking in its simplicity but in reality betrays a much more complex architectural design, conceived as a building integrated into the landscape and visually signalling the territory of the community that erected it.
Related Figures
Pépin le Bref — roi des Francs ayant fondé l'abbaye de Brantôme en 769, dont la présence historique dans la région contraste avec l'ancienneté immémoriale du dolmenPierre de Bourdeille (Brantôme) — abbé mémorialiste du XVIe siècle, figure emblématique de Brantôme, probable témoin de la Pierre Levée dans le paysage localProsper Mérimée — inspecteur général des Monuments Historiques au XIXe siècle, pionnier de la protection du patrimoine préhistorique français dont hérita ce classement de 1889Édouard Lartet — paléontologue et préhistorien français du XIXe siècle, figure du mouvement scientifique ayant conduit à la reconnaissance des monuments néolithiques comme patrimoine nationalGabriel de Mortillet — préhistorien français dont les travaux de classification des mégalithes dans les années 1870-1880 ont directement préparé le terrain aux premières lois de protection des monuments préhistoriques
