statue-menhir de la Prade
DatedEst. 4800–2500 BCE
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
Overview
The statue-menhir de la Prade is a statue-menhir of the Rouergue group, found at Coupiac in the département of Aveyron, France. It is the upper fragment of a larger statue, cut in sandstone, and is dated by typological estimate to 4800 BCE to 2500 BCE.
It was found in 1900 near the hamlet of La Prade. The original is kept in the musée Fenaille in Rodez.
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Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
Article
statue-menhir de la Prade
Originally the statue was male, with a face, both arms and hands, a baldric and “the object”.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de la PradeCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de la PradeCC BY-SA 4.0
The surviving piece is a block of sandstone measuring 0.49 m in height, 0.45 m in width and 0.18 m in thickness.
Originally the statue was male, with a face, both arms and hands, a baldric and “the object”. In a second phase two vertical lines were added to the face, the object was erased, and the right strap of the baldric was altered to represent a necklace of three rows continuing on the left side. The other characteristic female attributes (breasts, a Y-shaped pendant, hair) are nevertheless absent. On the back, vertical striations representing a garment were added over the left strap of the baldric and the shoulder-blade hooks.
ConservationSources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de la PradeCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de la PradeCC BY-SA 4.0
The statue is kept in the musée Fenaille in Rodez. A copy has been erected near the place where it was found.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Statue menhirs of France
A statue menhir is a carved standing stone of the later European Neolithic, in which a vertical slab or pillar has a stylised human figure cut into it, sometimes with hints of clothing or weapons. They are most commonly found in southern and western France, Catalonia, Corsica, Sardinia, Italy and the Alps, and France has most of the Atlas's records. A group from the Iron Age is also known in Liguria and Lunigiana in Italy, and there are two on Guernsey. One of them, La Gran'mère du Chimquière, "the grandmother of the cemetery", stands in a churchyard.
A well-known site is on Corsica. Filitosa, in the south of the island, is a megalithic site occupied from the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age until about Roman times. Arrowheads and pottery date the earliest habitation to 3300 BCE. Around 1500 BCE menhirs 2 to 3 metres high were erected there, carved with human faces, armour and weapons. About twenty menhirs of various periods have been counted. One interpretation, by Roger Grosjean, was that they were set up to ward off an invasion by a people he called the Torréens, who threw them down, broke them up and reused some as building stone, and then built the circular stone structures called torri; later researchers disputed this theory.
Dating rests on comparison with the Arco stelae, six Copper Age statue menhirs found in Trentino in 1989, which are similar in style to other anthropomorphic stelae of the fourth and third millennia BCE.
When visiting, look at the weapons and belt carved on the stone.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Statue menhir, Wikipedia: Filitosa, Wikipedia: Arco stelae · CC BY-SA 4.0
From the article
Dated moments in the story
- 1900
La statue a été découverte en 1900 près du hameau de La Prade.
Source - 2005
414-415 Jean-Pierre Serres, Les statues-menhirs du sud-Aveyron, Millau, Éditions du Beffroi, 2005, 48 p.
Source - 2010
Jean Guilaine), Hommes et femmes de pierre - Statues-menhirs du Rouergue et du Haut-Languedoc, Toulouse, Archives d'Écologie Préhistorique, 2010, 538 p.
Source
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 4800–2500 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for statue-menhirs in France; this site has not been dated itself. Statue menhirs were created during the later European Neolithic Period and the megalithic constructions of Brittany begin c. 4800 BC.Source for this date
Where it stands
France
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 43°57′09″ N, 2°36′08″ EFor a GPS or map app: 43.95246, 2.60213
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
statues-menhirs de Réganel4800–2500 BCE
statue-menhir de Monteillet4800–2500 BCE
statue-menhir de la Borie des Paulets4800–2500 BCE
statue-menhir de Saint-Jean-de-l'Hôpital4800–2500 BCE
statue-menhir de Crays4800–2500 BCE
statue-menhir de Balaguier4800–2500 BCE
statue-menhir de Monteils4800–2500 BCE
statue-menhir du Puech du Lac4800–2500 BCE
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q111817637wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
- statues-menhirs de Réganel1.8 km NE
- statue-menhir de Monteillet2.4 km SW
- statue-menhir de la Borie des Paulets3.1 km NE
- statue-menhir de Saint-Jean-de-l'Hôpital3.5 km NE
- statue-menhir de Crays6.2 km N
- statue-menhir de Balaguier6.3 km S
- statue-menhir de Monteils6.7 km S
- statue-menhir du Puech du Lac7.5 km S
- statue-menhir de Saint-Sernin7.7 km S
- statue-menhir de Boutaran9.4 km S
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Statue-menhir de la Prade" (French), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors