Just at the time when George Eogan and his team were revealing the wonderful discovery of the decorated stones at Knowth, of which more on another day, an intriguing experiment in stone was going on on a windy hilltop in the Pyrenees/Roussillon area of south west France. A group of experts and local officials decided to do no less, in the spirit of the then current heritage celebrations, than to build a dolmen. It was to be one the already recognised Dolmen Trail and near one well kept specimen, which is dated, by a newspaper account, to 2800 BC.
This is a striking example, its capstone being shapely as a curling leaf, or maybe an oyster shell. It stands in a circle of well tended stones, maybe three feet deep, with a neat path through them to the opening. The capstone itself looks like a brownish granite, with large chunks of some other, element in it.
So professional archaeologists and local officials got together to build a dolmen in the way it might have been done all those years ago. Using the same methods. First, the ground had to be levelled and the surrounds cleared of obstructions that would hinder the haulage of the building materials. You dig a hole into which you drop the uprights, and then wedge them to take the eventual capstone. They are hauled to the site of course, on rollers, made of straight portions of tree trunk.
Ropes are perfectly in keeping with historic methods. Then earth and stones are piled to a height which allows the capstone or capstones to be hauled up the slope and put into position. The original structures were covered entirely with earth and stones, and presumably left to take on a mantle of the natural vegetation of the area - shrubs, weeds, trees perhaps. What we know today as a dolmen is the bones of the structure.
And what better a body of men to do the hauling than the rugby crowd? The Independent news paper of Perpignan shows us pictures of fine, sturdy athletes (not all youths) doing their bit. Hard work? Tougher than being in the front row of the scrum" said one of them. Jean Philippe Bocquenet, a man at the centre of the scheme, records it as number 131 of the dolmens in the Pyrenees Orientales Department. It stands on the lip of a mountain of some 1,200 feet, looking down on a great, long reservoir, that of Caramany; woods galore, vineyards and orchards and Rasigueres, from where comes the best rose wine of all.
Were the Gods putting in their comment on the new construction, when the rain pelted down and lightning split the air as the huge capstone was hauled home?