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Past records, new views: Carnac 1830–2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Corinne Roughley
Affiliation:
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2PH, England.
Andrew Sherratt
Affiliation:
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 2PH, England.
Colin Shell
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, England.

Extract

The megalithic monuments of Carnac, Brittany, in the Département of the Morbihan, are amongst the most farnous in France. indeed in the world. This region has not only the densest conccntration of such sites in Europe but also retained its importance as a centre of monument-building from the late 5th to the :jrd millennium FK:, giving it a unique significance in the study of Neolithic landscapes (Sherratt 1990; 1998). Its menhirs, stone alignments, and megalithic tombs have attracted the attention of scholars since the 18th century, and there is thus an unusually full record, both written and pictorial, of the nature of these monuments as they were perceived over 300 years.

Type
Special section: Ancestral Archives: Explorations in the History of Archaeology
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2002

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