Designed to enchant: the great dolmens of Neolithic northern Europe

The word ‘dolmen’ – derived from the Breton taol maen (‘stone table’) – is regarded as a folk term for Neolithic monuments that consist of a massive capstone supported by three or more upright stones, or orthostats. Archaeologists have sought to subdivide these monuments into more precise typological categories, but Vicki Cummings and Colin Richards, the authors of Monuments in the Making, politely suggest that they are wrong to do so. Is it time to reclaim the word? Chris Catling reports.

When you look at a monument like Pentre Ifan in Pembrokeshire, what do you see? Back in 1951, writing in A Guide to the Prehistoric and Roman Monuments in England and Wales, Jacquetta Hawkes saw a massive wedge-shaped capstone almost ‘floating in the air’, held aloft by three slender orthostats. She observed that ‘the structure is in reality given a slightly fantastic air by the very narrow points on which the capstone rests; it appears improbable that so little can support so much’. Current visitors to the site, however, are met by an information board that states that ‘what we see before us today are the bare bones of a burial chamber that would originally have been covered with an earthen mound’ (phrasing that is echoed by the entry for the monument on Cadw’s website, https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/pentre-ifan-burial-chamber). In ‘Megaliths, Memory and the Power of Stones’ (2010), moreover, Chris Scarre characterises Pentre Ifan as ‘the denuded chamber’ from a mound that would have been radically different in appearance from the present monument.

This view – that all dolmens are the relics of monuments designed for burial – has led archaeologists to invent a whole raft of new typological terms, including megalithic tomb, sub-megalithic tomb, demi-dolmen, chambered tomb, portal tomb, portal dolmen, Type 1 and Type 2 passage grave, and gallery grave. Some of these are further subdivided into ‘simple’, ‘classic’, and ‘devolved’ forms, while some structures have defied categorisation altogether. This shift in terminology has had the effect of turning attention away from the monument’s form to consideration of its function, with the sole apparent purpose of the structure being to create a stone chamber to hold human remains.

LEFT Gwern Einion’s steeply sloping capstone stands against a dramatic sky in Gwynedd. What was the purpose of dolmen monuments like these, and were they always denuded stone frames, or had they originally been covered by mounds of earth? — Gwern Einion’s steeply sloping capstone stands against a dramatic sky in Gwynedd. What was the purpose of dolmen monuments like these, and were they always denuded stone frames, or had they originally been covered by mounds of earth?

This bewildering array of analytical terms has gone well beyond typology, and has also been harnessed to the task of tracing cultural influences. The perceived similarities and differences between the different tomb types has been used to suggest cultural connections between the various Neolithic peoples of Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, France, Portugal, and Spain; to suggest trade and migration patterns and routes; and to construct chronologies of monument-building and ‘Neolithisation’ (the adoption of Neolithic lifestyles). A separate strand of analysis, prevalent in the 1930s, concerned the shape and form of any covering mound – long or round – and the implications for cultural diffusion and chronology.

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