cromlech de Charcé

The cromlech de Charcé, also known as the Pierre levée de Beaupreau, is a standing stone at Charcé-Saint-Ellier-sur-Aubance in the French department of Maine-et-Loire. The site is classified as a monument historique, a French listing for protected historic buildings and structures.

The standing stone measures 2,40 m in height and is made of Eocene sandstone. It once formed part of a group of blocks surrounding the nearby dolmen known as the Pierre Couverte de Beaupreau, which lies 19 m to the northwest. A second block was still visible in 1946. It stood directly opposite the first, 17 m from the dolmen, and was described as a regular rectangular prism, half buried in the ground, measuring 1,65 m in width and 0,25 m in thickness.

Godard Faultrier believed that the scattered blocks formed a cromlech around the dolmen. Célestin Port, however, interpreted them as the remains of a second peulvan, or more probably of a destroyed dolmen. The standing stone's date is estimated by its form and type to fall between 3300 BCE and 2500 BCE.

Monuments of this type in France are generally known as cromlechs, a term for a stone circle. Older stone circles also occur in the Alentejo region of Portugal, where the Almendres Cromlech near Évora consists of about 95 granite monoliths arranged in small groups.

cromlech de Charcé is a stone circle in Charcé-Saint-Ellier-sur-Aubance, France. Wikidata describes it as: cromlech in Charcé-Saint-Ellier-sur-Aubance, France. A typological estimate: 3300 BCE to 2500 BCE. No English Wikipedia article exists for it; the full text below is the French article "Pierre levée de Beaupreau", shown in the original language.