Brittany is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period of Roman occupation. It became an independent kingdom and then a duchy before being united with the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province governed as a separate nation under the crown.
A tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or kurgans, and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones built for various purposes, may also originally have been a tumulus.
The Wessex culture is the predominant prehistoric culture of central and southern Britain during the early Bronze Age, originally defined by the British archaeologist Stuart Piggott in 1938.
This page concerns the prehistory of Brittany.
The Carnac stones are an exceptionally dense collection of megalithic sites near the south coast of Brittany in northwestern France, consisting of stone alignments (rows), dolmens, tumuli and single menhirs. More than 3,000 prehistoric standing stones were hewn from local granite and erected by the pre-Celtic people of Brittany and form the largest such collection in the world. Most of the stones are within the Breton municipality of Carnac, but some to the east are within neighboring La Trinité-sur-Mer. The stones were erected at some stage during the Neolithic period, probably around 3300 BC, but some may date to as early as 4500 BC.
Prehistoric France is the period in the human occupation of the geographical area covered by present-day France which extended through prehistory and ended in the Iron Age with the Roman conquest, when the territory enters the domain of written history.
Bush Barrow is a site of the early British Bronze Age Wessex culture, at the western end of the Normanton Down Barrows cemetery in Wiltshire, England. It is among the most important sites of the Stonehenge complex, having produced some of the most spectacular grave goods in Britain. It was excavated in 1808 by William Cunnington for Sir Richard Colt Hoare. The finds, including worked gold objects, are displayed at Wiltshire Museum in Devizes.
The Cairn of Barnenez is a Neolithic monument located near Plouezoc'h, on the Kernéléhen peninsula in northern Finistère, Brittany (France). It dates to the early Neolithic, about 4800 BC. Along with the Tumulus of Bougon and Locmariaquer megaliths, also located in Great West France, it is one of the earliest megalithic monuments in Europe and one of the oldest man-made structures in the world. It is also remarkable for the presence of megalithic art.
The Tumulus of Bougon or Necropolis of Bougon is a group of five Neolithic barrows located in Bougon, near La-Mothe-Saint-Héray, between Exoudun and Pamproux in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France.
Saint-Nicolas-du-Pélem is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department of Brittany in northwestern France.
Lavau is a commune in the Aube department in north-central France in the Grand Est Region. It is situated on the banks of the river Seine
The Leubingen tumulus is an Early Bronze Age "princely" grave of the Leubingen culture,, dating to about 1940 BC. It is located near the hills of Kyffhäuser in Leubingen, an Ortsteil of Sömmerda in the eastern German state of Thuringia.
The Glasinac-Mati culture is an archaeological culture, which first developed during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in the western Balkan Peninsula in an area which encompassed much of modern Albania to the south, Kosovo to the east, Montenegro, southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of western Serbia to the north. It is named after the Glasinac and Mati type site areas, located in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania respectively.
The Hilversum culture is a prehistoric material culture found in middle Bronze Age in the region of the southern Netherlands and northern Belgium. It has been associated with the Wessex culture from the same period in southern England, and is one of the material cultures of this part of northwestern continental Europe which has been proposed to have had a "Nordwestblock" language which was Indo-European, but neither Germanic nor Celtic.
Jacques Briard was a French archaeologist of prehistory. He was a student of Pierre-Roland Giot, the creator of modern Armorican archeology.
Pointe de la Torche is a promontory located at the southeastern end of the Baie d'Audierne in the commune of Plomeur in the Bigouden region of Finistère, France. It is an officially recognised natural site and at the top of the promontory is a prehistoric settlement and burial site that is registered as a historic monument.
Part of series of articles upon Archaeology of Kosovo
The Saint-Bélec slab is a stone artefact from western Brittany thought to be a map of an early Bronze Age principality. It was discovered by Paul du Châtellier in a prehistoric burial ground in Finistère, where it formed part of an early Bronze Age cist structure. Du Châtellier kept the slab at his house, the Château de Kernuz, before it came into the collection of the National Archaeological Museum. It was forgotten until 2014 when it was rediscovered in the cellar of the château. A 2017–2021 study by French and British universities and institutes identified the slab as an early Bronze Age map of part of the Odet valley. The slab is the earliest known map found in Europe and probably the earliest map of any known territory.
Hotié, Hostié or Maison de Viviane, also known as Tombeau des Druides is a megalithic tomb in Paimpont, Ille-et-Vilaine, in Brittany. The Hotié de Viviane is one of the prehistoric monuments in the Forest of Brocéliande cursorily described in the 19th century, but more recently, following the fires that have periodically devastated the forest, rediscovered and excavated by local groups. Legend makes it the home of the fairy Viviane, where she held the enchanter Merlin imprisoned. Another legend equates it with the esplumoir Merlin. When the location of the Val sans retour, a place figuring in medieval Arthurian literature, was identified with the Val de Rauco in the 19th century, the megalithic site near the Gurvant valley took the name of Hotié de Viviane. Hotié de Viviane is also sometimes identified as Tombeau de Viviane.
Kawabe-Takamori Kofun Cluster (川部・高森古墳群) is a group Kofun period burial mounds, located in the Kyozuka, Takamori neighborhood of the city of Usa, Ōita, on the island of Kyushu Japan. The tumuli were collectively designated a National Historic Site of Japan in 1980.
