dolmen des Mollières

The dolmen des Mollières, also known as the Beauvau dolmen, stands at Beauvau in the French département of Maine-et-Loire. It is a type of megalithic tomb built for burial, with upright stones supporting a large capstone. It is dated by typological estimate to 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE.

The monument is covered by a single capstone of very irregular shape. Beneath it, the burial chamber is a polygon formed by six orthostats and several smaller supplementary blocks. All the stones are made of sandstone. The end slab was torn away when the structure was excavated in 1836, so it no longer survives in its original position.

The structure was excavated in 1836 by the doctor Ouvrard, who found human bones at ground level, with heads placed to the south and feet to the north. He identified the remains as those of a vigorous man, a woman and a child. A later study by the doctor Lebaron instead identified five distinct skeletons: an old man, two adults and an adolescent.

Ouvrard reported no archaeological material, while Lebaron is said to have collected a wild boar tusk and a fragment of brown pottery. Dolmens of this kind in France generally date to the Late Neolithic, about 4000 to 3000 BCE, and many were covered with earth or smaller stones to form a mound. The monument's period here rests on a typological estimate.

dolmen des Mollières is a dolmen in Maine-et-Loire, France. A typological estimate: 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE. No English Wikipedia article exists for it; the full text below is the French article "Dolmen des Mollières", shown in the original language.