Tombes du Centre-Ouest de la France au Néolithique ancien et moyen

West-Central France lies between the Loire and the Gironde, and has the sedimentary basin of the southern Paris basin on one side and that of Aquitaine on the other. It constitutes a key region for the understanding of Neolithic funerary practices, but one which hitherto has not been studied in sufficient detail. During the first half of the 5th millenium BC, or even a little earlier, Early Neolithic influences of southern origin reached as far as the coast of Britanny. A Little later, the Danubian tradition and its Villeneuve-Saint-Germain and Cerny sucessors spread over considerable distances to the south of the Loire. Contacts with the East also brought cist graves, often containing collective burials, and pottery vessels with non-circular rim shapes. These appear in the Chambon tradition of the Middle Loire, and in the Cerny group they reach as far as Britanny, as well as being manifest in Normandy and the Paris basin. The megalithic cist graves of the Chambon group are dated to around 4500 BP. They are succeeded (or may indeed be contemporary with) the elongated and circular mounds with cist graves found at La Jardelle (Vienne). This site too may have been connected with the Chambon group. Further south and west appears passage graves with circular or rectangular chambers, standing within mounds of various forms. ln some cases these are long mounds of considerable size. One such burial chamber at Bougon F0 is dated to the first half of the 5th millenium, althought at that period it had probably no passage. Most of these monuments, however, are dated to between 4300 and 3500 BC. They generally contain fewer than ten bodies, clustered together, which may have been subject to intentional rearrangementor from which certain bones may have been removed.