Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Puyraveau Rise Stones, located at Saint-Léger-de-Montbrun in Les Deux-Sèvres, form a set of three dolmens erected in the Neolithic. These funerary monuments, located in a plain at 70 metres above sea level, are numbered from south to north (I, II, III). Dolmen No.1, classified in 1971, is distinguished by its 4 meters long trapezoidal cover table, resting on three orthostats delimiting a partially buried room. This site underwent clandestine excavations in the early 1960s, before Stephen Patte, then director of the prehistoric antiquities of Poitou-Charentes, recovered in 1965 some of the scattered artifacts, especially for Dolmen No. 2.

The dolmen n°2 of Puyraveau is considered one of the richest in Western Europe because of the quantity and quality of the objects discovered. In the 1970s, Georges Germond drew up a complete inventory, including 86 daggers, 247 arrow tips, 14 polished flint axes, bone and deer wood tools, as well as trimmings and pottery. These artifacts, combined with human bones, bear witness to sophisticated funeral and craft practices in Neolithic. The site, although partially disturbed by unauthorized excavations, provides valuable insight into the prehistoric communities of the region.

Classified as historical monuments since 1971, the dolmens of Puyraveau illustrate the importance of collective burials in the megalithic landscape of the Thouarsais. Their preservation makes it possible today to study rituals, construction techniques and cultural exchanges of the time. The site remains a major testimony of the human occupation in New Aquitaine during the Neolithic period, marked by the sedentarization and development of agriculture.

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