Megalithic architecture in the region

Megaliths between land and sea

Megalithic architecture in the landscape

The notion of landscape is important in the context of megalithic architecture in the Gulf of Morbihan. These structures were built to mark and organise the landscape over the long term. Even if they have a function - funerary for some, symbolic for all - they are also undoubtedly monuments designed to be seen, sometimes in a very ostentatious and spectacular way, sometimes less so. It's a fact that they are part and parcel of the landscape, past and present!

A landscape in perpetual evolution

The Gulf of Morbihan - a small sea in Breton - did not exist in Neolithic times. The sea level was 5 to 7 m lower and the shoreline was much further away than it is today. At the end of prehistoric times, imagine mudflats irrigated by a network of rivers (of which the rivers of Vannes, Crac'h and Auray are the main ones), the high points of which have become the islands of today's Gulf. Add to this more open panoramas, long before modern pine plantations and urbanisation, and you have a good idea of the landscape our ancestors observed.