Table des Marchand, Locmariaquer, Morbihan, FRA
N 47° 34.296 W 002° 56.982
30T E 503783 N 5268688
La Table des Marchand (An Daol Varchant in Breton) is a large dolmen located on the megalithic site of Locmariaquer (the Groh), in the French department of Morbihan.
Waymark Code: WM13E7Q
Location: Bretagne, France
Date Posted: 11/21/2020
Views: 2
The name comes from the patronymic of a family linked to this place.
State property, the dolmen, also known as Table-des-Marchands, has been classified as a historical monument since 1889.
The construction of the dolmen and the cairn dates back to the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. AD; the dating used is between -3900 and -3800. It is a passage tomb completed by a burial chamber, the whole originally forming a cairn. From a north-south orientation, the monument is about 12 m long, the corridor is 7 m long and has a height at the entrance of 1.4 m; the polygonal chamber has a height of 2.5 m.
The first excavations date back to 1811, but the objects that were then discovered have been lost. At the time, the monument looked like a flat slab resting on three pillars. It was restored in 1883, and again studied and consolidated by Zacharie Le Rouzic in 1937. After the research in 1985 and the restoration in 1991, the ensemble took the form of a cairn.
Presumably used for several centuries, the monument is made up of two engraved slabs. The entrance is on the south-east face.
The apse slab which constitutes the back of the burial chamber was originally to be in the open air and constitute a stand-alone monument; the stoneware “stele with crosses” is decorated on both sides, the internal one of the room presenting a mother-goddess with abundant hair and in human form schematized as an escutcheon. This escutcheon presents four rows of brackets oriented to the left and symmetrically. The external face is not visible. The entire megalith was subsequently built, starting from and around this first stele which faces the Auray river. The sticks being an augmentative of power, they probably deliver a warning message to the attention of those who approach the peninsula.
The second cover slab constitutes the ceiling of the room; it is 7 meters long, 4 wide and 0.80 thick, its weight is estimated at 65 tons. This orthogneiss slab is adorned with a hafted ax (with its polished blade, pointed heel and fairly broad edge), a butt and, in the lower part, the front end of a bovid, characterized by a muzzle broad, the nape short, the spine straight and the croup angular. It is part of a broken tabular block, another part of which was transported by sea to the tumulus of Gavrinis, about 5 kilometers away (we find on the cover slab the horns and spine of the bovid) , and the other on the Er Grah tumulus located just a few meters from the Merchant's Table, the decoration patterns complement each other perfectly.
Source: (
visit link)