Search Results

At the French site of Aillevans, not far from the border with Switzerland, there is a group of megalithic tombs (Pétrequin and Pinigre 1976). At first sight, these monuments conform to a wider tradition which is best represented at Sion on the Swiss side of the frontier, and at Aosta in Italy. In each case they feature massive stone cists associated with unburnt human bones (Mezzena 1998). These structures were sometimes located at one end of a low rubble platform or cairn, which could be either triangular or trapezoidal in plan. At Aosta and Sion they incorporated the remains of a series of anthropomorphic sculptures and, for that reason, the excavated evidence has played an important role in studies of statue menhirs. Dolmen 1 at Aillevans is equally remarkable but, in this case, the results of excavation have not attracted the attention they deserve (Pétrequin and Pinigre 1976: 325–49; Figure 25). In its original form, this structure consisted of a round mound six metres in diameter with a stone chamber and an antechamber. Again, it was associated with a quantity of disarticulated human bones. In a subsequent phase that construction was encased within a much larger trapezoidal cairn, seventeen metres in length. Although the circular monument was no longer a freestanding element, both its chamber and antechamber were retained. This was one of the latest megaliths in Europe, but sequences of this kind can be recognized at older tombs distributed across a much larger area. In its final phase, Dolmen 1 changed its character again. The chambered tomb was enclosed within a large wooden structure which had a similar outline to the cairn. The excavators concluded that it had been a roofed building. The stone chamber was located inside its eastern end, but the antechamber was left uncovered and acted as a kind of porch. Seen from a distance, the monument might have looked like a domestic dwelling. Indeed, Pétrequin and Pinigre (1976) specifically compare it with the well preserved buildings in the waterlogged Late Neolithic settlement at Clairvaux. According to their account, a megalithic tomb at Aillevans was almost completely concealed inside what appeared to be a house.

The starting point for this chapter is a work by the German artist Joseph Beuys. ‘7000 oaks’ is an installation which he inaugurated at Kassel, a city that had been damaged during the Second World War (Scholz 1986). Each tree was paired with a basalt stele which was quarried locally. In Beuys’s conception, the installation would change its character over time. For the first few years the standing stones would be the dominant feature, but they would become less conspicuous as the oaks grew to maturity. After that, there might be two very different outcomes. Either new trees would be planted as the old ones died— that was the artist’s plan—or a setting of monoliths would be all that remained with the stones themselves marking the positions of oaks that had disappeared. Beuys was concerned with regeneration in a way that was entirely appropriate in a war-damaged city where the oak trees would gradually replace a setting of rocks. His work was informed by his interest in ecology and played on a contrast between wood and stone which is equally relevant to archaeology. They are very different materials from one another, but both were used in prehistoric structures and employed in distinctive ways. Wood is an organic substance and eventually decays. Stone, on the other hand, is inorganic and for that reason it lasts a long time. The distinction is important in considering ancient architecture (Parker Pearson and Ramilsonina 1998). Of course, there were places in which only one of these materials was available, but there were others where the distinctive ways in which stone and wood were used are especially informative. Two examples illustrate the point. Neolithic houses in Northern Europe were timber constructions, but most of the tombs that accompanied them were made of local stone. In this case, the choice of building material suggests that these dwellings were thought to have a finite lifespan, whilst the tombs of their occupants would have a longer history. Similarly, the Neolithic longhouse at La Haute Mée in north-west France was built of wood but was accompanied by a granite menhir (Cassen et al. 1998).