dolmen Chianca

Italy's dolmens are found in the south, in Apulia, Sardinia and Sicily. In Sicily there are small examples at Mura Pregne near Palermo, at Sciacca, at Monte Bubbonia and at Butera. The most celebrated group lies near Bisceglie, on the Adriatic coast of Apulia, where impressive grave-altars called dolmens were built in the Bronze Age.

The Dolmen della Chianca takes its name from the local dialect word chienghe, meaning stone slab. It has a passage 10 metres long leading to a burial cell of 2 by 1.6 metres. The Italian physiologist and antiquarian Angelo Posso claimed to be the first scientist to describe it, having been directed to it by a local farmer in August 1901, and he called it the largest and best preserved of all Italian dolmens. The long passage makes these Apulian monuments quite different from the simple three-stone tables the word suggests. The regional background, “Dolmens of Apulia and southern Italy”, is given below.

No scientific date has been published for this site. Monuments of this type in Italy are generally dated 4000 BCE to 3000 BCE; the site itself may fall inside or outside that range.

Most dolmens date from the Late Neolithic period (4000-3000 BCE); the Sardinian stazzoni are a local form of dolmen.