Le tumulus de Beg an Dorchenn - Pointe de la Torche, Finistère, FRA
N 47° 50.231 W 004° 21.202
30T E 398728 N 5299090
The tumulus of Beg an Dorchenn rises on a natural eminence overlooking the bay of Audierne, on the peninsula known as Pointe de la Torche (improper translation of Beg an Dorchenn), in Plomeur, a town in Finistère, in Brittany.
Waymark Code: WM13EGK
Location: Bretagne, France
Date Posted: 11/23/2020
Views: 1
It has two superimposed cairns. The upper cairn contains two megalithic monuments:
a middle Neolithic dolmen, with a passage and a compartmentalized chamber;
a covered alley from the Late Neolithic era, which extends the corridor of the dolmen on the eastern slope.
Clipped, the upper cairn now reveals the two monuments.
Bones found in the dolmen are dated from 4500 to 4090 BC. The peninsula has been listed as a historical monument since 1960, and has been part of a listed natural site since 1989.
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The site bears the Breton name of Beg an Dorchenn, which means “cushion tip”. Because, according to Jean-Marie Abgrall, the word torchenn ("cushion") "gives the physiognomy of this promontory whose rounded back has the appearance of a colossal cushion". Cartographers incorrectly translate into "point of the Torch", while archaeologists keep the Breton name.
Beg an Dorchenn, or the point of the Torch, is a peninsula separating the bay of Audierne (to the north), from the cove of Pors Carn (to the south). About 500 meters long and 100 meters wide, the peninsula rises in a hill 16 meters high on which the tumulus rests6.
The site has been occupied since the Final Mesolithic, as evidenced by the presence of a shell mound dated from 5640 to 5550 BC. As the sea level was lower8, the promontory offered a first-rate view of Audierne bay.
The dolmen appears in the Middle Neolithic, and the covered alley in the Late Neolithic. In 1919, Charles Bénard Le Pontois saw in this place a possible "center of influence" for the builders of the many megalithic monuments in the area: he observed, for example, that the 600 or 700 menhirs which were once aligned in four rows in Lestriguiou, in 3 km away, headed “exactly, geometrically” towards the top of the tumulus.