Dolmen sous tumulus des Tatonneries
MonumentHidden Treasure
Dolmen sous tumulus des Tatonneries, located in Nourray (Loir-et-Cher), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Nourray, Loir-et-Cher, Centre-Val de Loire
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.7248, 1.0403
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00098533
The Tatonneries dolmen at Nourray, a Neolithic vestige buried under a mantle of earth, reveals the funerary art of the first farmers in the Loir-et-Cher region. It was listed as a Historic Monument in 1889.
© Wikimedia Commons
History
In the heart of the Beauce region of Vendôme, where cereal fields give way to the wooded fringes of the Loir-et-Cher region, stands one of the oldest examples of organised human activity in the Centre-Val de Loire: the Tatonneries dolmen in a tumulus. Wrapped in a cairn of earth and stones, this Neolithic funerary monument is an invitation to travel more than five thousand years back in time, to a rural civilisation whose architectural mastery still commands the admiration of prehistorians today. What distinguishes this dolmen from many other regional megaliths is precisely the partial preservation of its original burial mound. Where most of the dolmens in the Loir-et-Cher have been stripped of their earthy mantle by centuries of intensive farming, the Tatonneries dolmen retains its characteristic domed silhouette, allowing us to visualise in situ the complete architecture of a burial chamber as its builders conceived it: not as an open-air monument, but as a sacred underground space, on the border between the world of the living and that of the dead. A visit to this site offers a rare experience of authenticity. Far from the crowds that flock to the great Breton megaliths, the Tatonneries can be discovered in an almost absolute silence, conducive to contemplation and reflection. The upright stones and the roof slab, massive and raw, speak for themselves with an eloquence that no reconstruction can match. The surrounding area adds to the uniqueness of the site. The commune of Nourray, nestled in the canton of Mondoubleau, has a gentle, undulating bocage landscape, very different from the limestone plateaux with which megalithism is sometimes associated. The lightly wooded setting is a reminder that Neolithic populations chose their burial sites carefully, close to water resources and arable land, but always at some symbolic distance from everyday living spaces.
Architecture
The Tatonneries dolmen belongs to the family of megalithic burials with a single chamber or short corridor, a widespread type in the Centre-Val de Loire and the Perche vendômois. Its structure is based on the universal principle of the dolmen: several orthostats (large vertical slabs) set in the ground form the side and front walls of a burial chamber, on which rest one or more horizontal cover slabs (tables), the whole of which may weigh several tonnes. At Nourray, the materials used were probably blocks of Jurassic limestone or local sandstone, abundant in the subsoil of the Loir-et-Cher region, which Neolithic builders quarried, roughly shaped and transported from nearby outcrops. The major architectural feature of the monument lies in the preservation of its tumulus, a ridge of earth and pebbles that enveloped the dolmenic chamber and concealed it from the eyes of the uninitiated. This device was not just aesthetic: it ensured the structural cohesion of the whole by exerting lateral pressure on the orthostats, and gave the site a strong symbolic dimension, creating a veritable artificial mountain in the heart of a flat landscape. The shape of the tumulus, probably elongated and oriented along an east-west axis in keeping with the practices of the time, also made it possible to distinguish this sacred territory from the ordinary space of the living from a distance. The typical dimensions of a monument of this type in the Centre region are 8 to 15 metres long, with an inner chamber 2 to 4 metres long and 1.5 to 2.5 metres wide. The height of the covering slab, rarely more than 1.5 metres, meant that the officiants had to use a curved entrance, reinforcing the initiatory and solemn nature of the passage to this funerary space.
Related Figures
Communautés néolithiques du bassin du Loir (IVe-IIIe millénaire av. J.-C.) — bâtisseurs et utilisateurs du monumentAdrien de Mortillet — préhistorien français du XIXe siècle ayant contribué au recensement des mégalithes de la région CentreCommission des Monuments Historiques (1889) — instance ayant classé le dolmen dès la première liste nationale de protection
Tags
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Dolmen sous tumulus des Tatonneries located?
Dolmen sous tumulus des Tatonneries is located in Nourray, Loir-et-Cher department, Centre-Val de Loire region, France.
Is Dolmen sous tumulus des Tatonneries open to visitors?
Dolmen sous tumulus des Tatonneries is currently closed to visitors.