statue-menhir de Serregrand
DatedEst. 4800–2500 BCE
Photo Milca56 · CC BY-SA 4.0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
The statue-menhir de Serregrand is a statue menhir of the Rouergat group, found at Rebourguil in the department of Aveyron, France. It is dated by typological estimate to between 4800 and 2500 BCE.
The statue was found in 1892 and is complete. It was originally a male figure that was later altered to a female one.
Read on Wikipedia2 min readCC BY-SA 4.0
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 Serregrand
The face, including nose and eyes, is triangular, and the arms, legs, fingers and toes are clearly visible.
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de SerregrandCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de SerregrandCC BY-SA 4.0
The figure is carved and engraved on a slab of local Permian sandstone measuring 0.80 m in height, 0.38 m in width and 0.13 m in thickness. The face, including nose and eyes, is triangular, and the arms, legs, fingers and toes are clearly visible. The breasts are placed very high, on either side of the face, perhaps for lack of space. The back is badly damaged, but the shoulder-blade hooks can still be made out.
The baldric and 'the object', both male attributes, remain visible, although the object was partly erased to make room for the necklace, a female attribute. The belt has a round buckle and a chevron decoration, probably added when the statue was changed to a female one. The figure wears a pleated garment.
ConservationSources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de SerregrandCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de SerregrandCC BY-SA 4.0
The statue is held in the musée d'Archéologie nationale. A copy has been erected near the place where it was found.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de SerregrandCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (French): Statue-menhir de SerregrandCC BY-SA 4.0
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. Examples are most commonly found in southern and western France, Catalonia, Corsica, Sardinia, Italy and the Alps.
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
- 1892
Elle a été découverte en 1892. Elle a été sculptée et gravée sur une dalle de grès permien d'origine locale.
Source - 2005
474-475 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
Photographs
1 photograph, each with its author and licence
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°53′51″ N, 2°45′02″ EFor a GPS or map app: 43.89744, 2.75053
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.
statue-menhir d'Anglas4800–2500 BCE
statue menhir of Maurels4800–2500 BCE
statues-menhirs des Ardaliès4800–2500 BCE- Megalithic complexstatues-menhirs des Ardaliès
statue-menhir de Saint-Léonce4800–2500 BCE
Statue-menhir de Belmont-sur-Rance4800–2500 BCE- statue-menhir de Belmont4800–2500 BCE
statue-menhir de Saint-Julien4800–2500 BCE
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q111973513wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
- statue-menhir d'Anglas6.0 km W
- statue menhir of Maurels7.1 km N
- statues-menhirs des Ardaliès7.5 km N
- statues-menhirs des Ardaliès7.5 km N
- statue-menhir de Saint-Léonce7.6 km SW
- Statue-menhir de Belmont-sur-Rance8.1 km S
- statue-menhir de Saint-Julien8.1 km S
- statue-menhir de Belmont8.1 km S
- statue-menhir de Serres8.9 km SW
- statue-menhir de Serres8.9 km SW
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Statue-menhir de Serregrand" (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