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The Dual Nature of the Megalithic Colonisation of Prehistoric Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

G. E. Daniel
G. E. Daniel
Affiliation:
Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge
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Extract

In a note in the last issue of these Proceedings, Professor C. Daryll Forde commented on some of the tentative conclusions set forth by the present writer in two articles in earlier issues, and went on to a general discussion of the morphology and diffusion of prehistoric burial chambers. During the last few years it has been generally held by archaeologists that the megalithic colonisation of western and northern Europe was dual in character, consisting of two separate movements—the one diffusing Passage Graves, the other diffusing Gallery Graves: this notion is implicit in the recent writings of Childe, Hawkes, Estyn Evans, Powell and Megaw. It has seemed to me abundantly clear that, even if these two sets of movements were ultimately from the same Mediterranean source (and this, too, is open to question), as far as western and northern Europe was concerned they were two distinct and separate movements. This conclusion Forde challenges, and regards all Gallery Graves as local developments from degenerate Passage Graves in the various regions of Europe to which the Passage Graves were diffused. It has seemed worth while to the present writer, before meeting Forde's detailed criticisms, to deal with his general thesis, and it is the purpose of this article to argue and describe the dual nature of the megalithic colonisation of Europe.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 7 , 1941 , pp. 1 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1941

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References

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page 6 note 1 But they are never placed in the broader of the two ends of these wedge-shaped barrows.

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page 16 note 5 Powell refers to this Central group as the Boyne group, while here we designate the whole culture by this name.

page 17 note 1 Moytura is set in a round barrow as might be expected in a Passage Grave derivative tomb.

page 17 note 2 Prehistory of Scotland, 71–3.

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page 21 note 8 And it is worth noting in passing that the first stage of this axehead development is generally denied as an independent period, although Brøndsted, op. cit., has attempted to revive it.

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page 27 note 2 La Civilization Megalitica Catalana y la Cultura Pirenaica, Barcelona, 1925Google Scholar. See particularly plates II and XIV. The tombs of the Passage Grave series are figured in plate I; their explanation lies possibly in a movement across north Spain from Galicia or may perhaps be connected with the Monastier and Collorgues tombs in France already mentioned.

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page 27 note 5 Information from M. Balsan.

page 30 note 1 In the Tourine collection in the Geneva Museum of Art and Archaeology.

page 30 note 2 Information from H. N. Savory.

page 30 note 3 South of the well-known Kergonfals Angled Passage Grave.

page 30 note 4 See Forde, , ‘The Megalithic Gallery in Brittany,’ Man, 1929, 80Google Scholar. Forde pays scant attention to the Morbihan Gallery Graves, however.

page 32 note 1 I am indebted to Mr T. G. E. Powell for his kind assistance during 1938 in making a field-survey of these and many other Gallery Graves in the Loire valley.

page 32 note 2 These connections reveal themselves in the grave-goods, the portholes and the ‘Earth-Mother Goddesses’ or ‘Dolmen-Deities.’

page 32 note 3 The Archaeology of Jersey, 7–9.

page 32 note 4 Distributional continuity is not necessary in studying megalithic diffusion, as we have said in connection with the origin of the Scandinavian megalithic tombs, but it already exists in France from south to north via the west and the Loire Valley.

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page 33 note 1 I referred to this group of Transepted Gallery Graves in my previous article as the Retz group.

page 34 note 1 The Large A-Dolmens such as Tinkinswood and Maes-y-Felin in south Glamorgan must also come early in the Severn-Cotswold series.

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page 34 note 4 This is, we repeat, an entirely tentative classification and owes a great deal to the previous writings of Evans and Mahr.

page 34 note 5 Irish Nat. J., VII, 256Google Scholar, fig. 5.

page 34 note 6 Ulster J. Arch., 1939, 165Google Scholar, fig. 6b.

page 36 note 1 Preliminary Survey of the Ancient Monuments of Northern Ireland, 1940, XIIIGoogle Scholar.

page 36 note 2 These variants Cc 1 and Cc 2 are especially mentioned here because Mahr groups the Cc 1 tombs with forecourts facing and the Cc 2 tombs into one class, his ‘lobster-claw derivatives’ (Proc. Preh. Soc., 1937, 347Google Scholar); an unfortunate name which describes two different kinds of monuments.

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page 37 note 4 Proc. Preh. Soc., 1937, 172Google Scholar.

page 38 note 1 Ulster J. Arch., 1939, 162Google Scholar.

page 38 note 2 This term is used here to include all the Irish Gallery Graves series (with the possible exception of type D) and not only the so-called ‘horned cairns’—type C.

page 41 note 1 Essays and Studies presented to Sir William Ridgeway (Cambridge), 1913Google Scholar.

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page 41 note 4 The Vaulted Tombs of the Mesara, Liverpool, 1924Google Scholar.

page 42 note 1 See Hutchinson, R. W., Illustrated London News, March 2, 1940, 284–5Google Scholar.

page 42 note 2 See his ‘Chamber Tombs of Mycenae,’ Arch., 82, 1932Google Scholar.

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page 44 note 2 Scotland in Pagan Times; Bronze and Stone Ages, figs. 252–5.

page 44 note 3 Anderson, op. cit., 245 and 247.

page 45 note 1 Op. cit., 231 and 238.

page 45 note 2 Rhind Lecture quoted by Childe, , Trans. Glasgow Arch. Soc., new ser., VIII, 129Google Scholar.

page 45 note 3 Prehistory of Scotland, 50.

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page 46 note 2 Whereas in the Danish tombs, allegedly derived via Caithness from Iberia, there exists a great deal of associational evidence to warrant a very close connection between Spain and northern Europe.

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page 46 note 4 Dawn of European Civilisation, 1939, 209Google Scholar.

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page 47 note 3 The Progress of Early Man, 60.

page 47 note 4 Trans. Glas. Arch. Soc., new ser., VIII, 136. Bews's estimate of the megalithic colonisation is interesting: he writes (Human Ecology, 152), ‘It is generally believed to have been somewhat superficial in its influence … and may well have been the result of the somewhat transient visits of sea-farers or traders.’

page 47 note 5 Op. cit., 120.

page 47 note 6 On this point see Perry, , The Growth of Civilisation, 1937 edition, 127–30Google Scholar, and Childe, , Prehistory of Scotland, 56–7Google Scholar.

page 47 note 7 Liverpool Annals, V, 114Google Scholar.

page 48 note 1 European Civilisation (ed. Eyre, Edward), II, 182Google Scholar.

page 48 note 2 Op. cit., 180.

page 48 note 3 Megalithic Culture of Northern Europe, p. 1. Cf. MrsHawkes, , Antiquity, 1934, 26Google Scholar, and Childe, , Trans. Glas. Arch. Soc., new ser., VIII, 136Google Scholar.

page 49 note 1 Prehistory of Scotland, 56.