dolmen des Issières

The dolmen was built at the top of a small rise. Its original architecture is difficult to interpret because of the state of the monument after the excavations of the early twentieth century. The burial chamber is a megalithic cist of square plan (2 m on each side), bounded by four orthostates (numbered I to IV) and by an antenna (slabs numbered V and VI). The slabs were set in foundation pits dug 0.40 to 0.60 m deep into the underlying limestone and wedged with clay and limestone plaquettes.

Slab I is trapezoidal with a rounded top and has been badly damaged by frost. Slab II is the most massive; a deep natural fluting, 0.30 to 0.40 m wide, runs across its whole height. Slab III rests at its top against slab I and is broken in two. Its original height was at least 2.20 m, and since it is badly damaged by frost at the top it may have been higher. Slab IV is the only one in a perfectly vertical position, and its regular top suggests that it has not been damaged. Slab V lies flat on the ground. The opening to the south-east of the cist may correspond to a missing slab or a low wall.

No covering element was found. The cist was surrounded by careful paving made of a first layer of large plaquettes topped by a second layer of smaller elements. Slabs I to IV are of grey limestone that outcrops locally as limestone pavement.

The bones found were very fragmented, and no anatomical connection was observed. Despite the disturbance caused by the earlier excavations, it seems that the long bones had been pushed back along the walls of the cist. The study of the 400 human teeth recovered indicates a population of at least twenty-five individuals of more than 7 years and two children.

The grave goods collected during the clandestine excavations of the early century were not kept. The excavations of 1968 produced a small assemblage from the sieving of earlier spoil and from trial trenches. The stone tools include fourteen arrowheads (lozenge-shaped, stemmed, and stemmed and winged), a small dagger or retouched blade of flint and two pebble hammerstones. The potsherds are of Bell Beaker type or belong to a coarser grey pottery with large quartz and crushed calcite temper. Meyer reported a parietal bone mounted as an ornament, and a pellet of ochre was found in the fill of the cist during the excavations of 1968.

The whole assemblage is attributed to the Final Neolithic.