Tumulus d'Er-Run-Bras
MonumentHidden Treasure
Tumulus d'Er-Run-Bras, located in Erdeven (Département 56), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Erdeven, Département 56, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00091188
A monumental vestige of the Breton Neolithic, the Er-Run-Bras tumulus stands in Erdeven with its ancestral earthen mass. A silent testimony to the funerary rites of the first farmers of Morbihan, rooted in an unchanged Atlantic landscape.
History
The Er-Run-Bras tumulus in Erdeven, a commune in Morbihan renowned for its Kerzerho megalithic alignment, is one of the most eloquent collective burials of the Armorican Neolithic. Its Breton name - literally "the great hill" - says it all about the first impression it makes on visitors: an artificial eminence, slowly built by human hands over five millennia ago, which continues to discreetly dominate the Morbihan coastal bocage. What makes Er-Run-Bras so special is precisely the fact that it is part of this exceptional area, the Quiberon peninsula and its immediate surroundings, one of the densest Neolithic territories in Western Europe. Within this restricted perimeter, corridor dolmens, alignments, cairns and tumuli are concentrated, each monument revealing a facet of the same cultural project: cementing a community around its dead, marking out a territory, dialoguing with the cosmos. Er-Run-Bras is fully in keeping with this dynamic. A visit to Er-Run-Bras is just as much for archaeology enthusiasts as for walkers looking for a change of scenery. The monument doesn't reveal its secrets in a show: it offers itself over time, in that suspended moment when you realise that the mass of earth and stone in front of you was shaped by men and women who planted spelt, reared cattle and carefully buried their ancestors. The weeds and lichens that now colonise the mound reinforce this impression of a long time ago, impervious to modern urgency. The natural setting further enhances the experience. Erdeven lies just a few kilometres from the wild beaches of the Atlantic coast, in an environment of moorland, wetlands and hedged farmland that, in places, evokes the landscape of five thousand years ago. The Er-Run-Bras burial mound benefits from this unspoilt atmosphere, conducive to meditation and reflection on the origins of Breton civilisation.
Architecture
The Er-Run-Bras tumulus belongs to the family of long or oval-shaped tumulus mounds characteristic of the Armorican Neolithic. Built of earth and local stone - probably granite and schist quarried in the immediate vicinity of the site - the surface of the mound is elongated, and its original height could have been several metres before natural subsidence and erosion over the millennia. This type of monument generally conceals one or more dry-stone burial chambers at its heart, sometimes accessible via a paved corridor oriented according to astronomical or symbolic considerations, as was frequently the case in Neolithic Morbihan. The construction technique used is that of the encased cairn: a core of carefully arranged granite blocks forms the burial chamber and its corridor, the whole being then covered by a compact mass of earthy sediment and gravel, shaping the visible mound. The walls of the chamber are made up of orthostats - large slabs standing vertically - supported by horizontal cover slabs. This megalithic architecture, sober in its means but impressive in its dimensions, reveals a remarkable mastery of engineering without metal or wheels. The orientation of the burial mound, its exact dimensions and the state of preservation of its internal chamber would all benefit from in-depth field research to document them accurately. Compared with the neighbouring monuments at Erdeven and Carnac, Er-Run-Bras forms part of a coherent architectural corpus that bears witness to the circulation of knowledge and skills between Armorican Neolithic communities.
Related Figures
Bâtisseurs néolithiques anonymes d'Erdeven (vers 4000-3000 av. J.-C.)James Miln, archéologue écossais pionnier des fouilles mégalithiques morbihannaises (XIXe s.)Zacharie Le Rouzic, archéologue carnaçois et premier conservateur du musée de Préhistoire de CarnacCharles-Tanguy Le Roux, préhistorien breton ayant contribué à l'inventaire des mégalithes du Morbihan (XXe s.)Serge Cassen, chercheur du CNRS spécialiste du Néolithique armoricain et des monuments d'Erdeven
Map
Coordinates not available for this monument.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Tumulus d'Er-Run-Bras located?
Tumulus d'Er-Run-Bras is located in Erdeven, Département 56 department, Bretagne region, France.
Is Tumulus d'Er-Run-Bras open to visitors?
Tumulus d'Er-Run-Bras is currently closed to visitors.