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Origin and history

The dolmen de la Pierre-Alot, located in Vitry-lès-Nogent in the Haute-Marne, is part of a set of three prehistoric burials known as dolmens du Bois de Lardigny. This monument, dated from the recent Neolithic and Chalcolithic period, was first described in 1860 by Abbé Godard, then partially searched in the 1870s by A. Daguin and Father Bonaventure. Ranked as historical monuments in 1889, it was restored in 1950 by P. Ballet, although its original architecture remains unknown.

The dolmen consists of two orthostats (vertical pillars) and a bedside slab, delimiting a funeral chamber of 1.90 m by 1.20 m, oriented north-south. The cover table, with an estimated weight of 9 tonnes, is 3 m long by 3 m wide, with a thickness of 0.35 m. The floor of the room is covered with a pavement still visible today. The tumulus, now incomplete, would have measured about 13 m in diameter at 1.20 m in height according to Louis Lepage's estimates.

During the excavations conducted by Father Bonaventure, a few bone fragments and three cut flints were discovered attesting to his funeral use. Nearby, two other megalithic burials, now very degraded, complete this archaeological complex. One slab, located 300 m east, has a "T"-shaped structure with inclined slabs, while the third, to the north, is reduced to a 3 m long trunk in a 7-8 m diameter terrace.

This site illustrates the collective funeral practices of Neolithic, where dolmens served as burial places for local communities. Their orientation, architecture and found objects (such as flint) offer valuable clues to the beliefs and social organization of the people of the time. Ranked among the first historical monuments of France, the dolmen de la Pierre-Alot remains a major testimony of the megalithic heritage of the Great East.

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