Documents found
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41.More information
The Tivulaghju megalithic site as been known for a long time. An excavation campaign was directed in 1960 by Roger Grosjean and Jean Liégeois. The chronology of Corsican megalithism was based on the megalithic cists identified there, together with those at Vasculacciu. They were then attributed to the third millennium bc. Revision of the documentation and new data now allow those burial places to be dated to the Middle Neolithic, i. e. the mid-fifth millennium. Comparable monuments are numerous, in both Corsica and Sardinia; they permit a cultural relationship between those two islands during the Neolithic to be confirmed.
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42.More information
rous carefully dressed standing stones up to 8 m tall. Similar monuments of wood were also made. These « menhirs » were erected for a variety of reasons — in connection with a death, to commemorate an important event, or simply as territorial markers. The megalithic tombs and standing stones are directly associated with a particular type of settlement, enclosed within impressive, often multiple ditches, with entrance via one or more megalithic gateways closed each night by rolling a large circular stone slab in front. There are some grounds for believing that the megalithic tradition of Madagascar originated in Indonesia. The collective nature of the tombs, however, requiring considerable effort in their construction, appears to be a late feature and to have been preceded by a phase of individual burials. It seems that the change to collective burial was effected by an merina king who wished to give greater cohesion to his people. This model shows us how a society could change from individual burial in a stone cist to family burial in large monuments of « dolmen » type without external influence. Traduction Ch. Scarre, Cambridge
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