Ensemble mégalithique dénommé alignements de Cojoux
MonumentHidden Treasure
Ensemble mégalithique dénommé alignements de Cojoux, located in Saint-Just (Département 35), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Saint-Just, Département 35, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 47.7646, -1.9762
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00090788
On the wild moors of Saint-Just, the Cojoux alignments spread out their Neolithic menhirs and cromlechs over more than 3 km - one of the most complete and least visited megalithic sites in Brittany.
History
At the heart of the Cojoux moor, in the commune of Saint-Just in Ille-et-Vilaine, lies one of Brittany's most remarkable and little-known megalithic complexes. Away from the mass tourist circuits, this vast complex groups together alignments of menhirs, burial mounds, dolmens and cromlechs scattered across a plateau of Atlantic moorland that the wind sweeps across in all seasons. Where Carnac attracts the crowds, Cojoux offers an intimate and striking communion with the Neolithic period. What fundamentally sets Cojoux apart from other Breton megalithic sites is the exceptional diversity of its monuments in a small area. In a single walk, the visitor passes from alignments of upright stones with tormented profiles to elongated mounds covered with flowery moorland, then to circular structures whose ritual function remains partly enigmatic. This typological variety makes the site a veritable catalogue of funerary and ceremonial architecture from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC. The experience of visiting the site is as much about the landscape as the monuments themselves. The Cojoux moor rolls out its changing hues - the acid green of spring, the burnt gold of summer, the purple of the heather in flower in August and September - around the standing stones, some of which are two metres high. The silence, the unobstructed views over the Saint-Just ponds and the wooded valleys of the nearby Vilaine, give the whole place a deeply memorable end-of-the-world atmosphere. The site is freely accessible on foot from the market town of Saint-Just, thanks to a network of signposted footpaths winding through the moorland. Unobtrusive educational panels line the route, enabling even visitors with little archaeological experience to find their way around and understand the chronology of the various structures. This unspoilt setting, listed as a Historic Monument since 1978, appeals as much to families as to archaeo-enthusiasts and photographers in search of low-angled light.
Architecture
The Cojoux megalithic site brings together several types of monument characteristic of the Armorican Neolithic. The alignments themselves consist of parallel rows of menhirs - blocks of local granite standing vertically - varying in height from a few decimetres to more than two metres. These stones, with their irregular silhouettes sculpted by millennia of erosion, are placed in orientations that seem to take account of the relief and the path of the sun, although no precise astronomical calculation can be made with any certainty. Elongated mounds make up the other major monumental family on the site. These artificial mounds, twenty to fifty metres long and around ten metres wide, have a base of granite slabs forming corridors or burial chambers. Their trapezoidal plan, with a wide front facing east, is typical of Armorican mounds from the Middle Neolithic. Several have been excavated and have yielded bones in a secondary position, suggesting collective burials repeated over time. The rarer cromlechs take the form of oval or circular enclosures of low menhirs, defining a space on the ground around twenty metres in diameter. The material used is almost exclusively local granite, quarried from natural outcrops on the plateau. The lack of fine carving - typical of megalithic architecture - contrasts with the precision with which the blocks are set into the ground, demonstrating a high level of technical expertise. The whole site covers an area of around three kilometres of moorland, offering a remarkable density of monuments that justifies comparison with the major megalithic sites in Morbihan.
Related Figures
Populations néolithiques de l'intérieur armoricain (bâtisseurs, Ve-IIIe millénaire av. J.-C.)Paul du Châtellier (archéologue finistérien, pionnier de l'inventaire des mégalithes bretons, XIXe siècle)Zacharie Le Rouzic (archéologue, fouilles et relevés des sites mégalithiques armoricains, début XXe siècle)Jacques Briard (préhistorien breton, travaux sur l'Âge du Bronze et les mégalithes d'Ille-et-Vilaine, XXe siècle)Gilles Leroux (archéologue, campagnes de prospection en Haute-Bretagne, XXe siècle)
Tags
Nearby castles
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Ensemble mégalithique dénommé alignements de Cojoux located?
Ensemble mégalithique dénommé alignements de Cojoux is located in Saint-Just, Département 35 department, Bretagne region, France.
Is Ensemble mégalithique dénommé alignements de Cojoux open to visitors?
Ensemble mégalithique dénommé alignements de Cojoux is currently closed to visitors.
