Jersey Dolmens - History of Dolmens in Jersey

History of Dolmens in Jersey

By the time the dolmens came to be built, people were settled in Jersey, although it was still at that time connected by a land bridge to the continent of Europe (until around 6800 BC). The new stone age differs from the old in that stone tools were still used – axes, daggers etc. – but the community was now settled and farmed the land; they did not hunt and follow prey.

Of their habitations, no trace remains; it is likely from the evidence found elsewhere that they had fairly basic wooden huts, sealed with mud and clay, which have been lost. Only the dolmens and menhirs remain.

The Neolithic sites such as dolmens, passage graves and the like used to be considered to be primarily tombs of chieftains.

Possibly drawing from the Egyptian model, a tribe was imagined as labouring away to build a burial site of stone for a mighty chieftain, much as the workers in Egypt had done for the pharaohs. Beliefs of ancient Egypt have survived in written form, and it seems clear that the embalmed body of the king was entombed underneath or within the pyramid to protect it and allow his transformation and ascension to the afterlife, and a place among the gods. A new pharaoh would mean a new tomb, a new pyramid, often built in fairly close proximity to others.

But the Neolithic sites do not seem to function like that. They are scattered. There is no easy way of seeing that someone was special, singled out. Bodies were often defleshed (left so that the flesh rotted away) or burnt before interment. Ancient Jewish burials – where a tomb was used – then the bones gathered up and placed in a burial casket – show a similarity of practice.

This is also completely unlike Celtic burials, where tribal chieftains were often buried with their chariots, and grave goods ( though horses were apparently usually too valuable to bury with their owner). It is immediately clear with these burials that they were for a man of stature and importance within the tribe. The one site – unfortunately inaccessible – in Jersey where this is seen is Hougue Boete.

But with the dolmens, as Mark Patton has pointed out, the human remains found are few in number, and sometimes (as La Sergenté) non-existent. This is also the case in Brittany, where animal bones can be found, and not human bones, suggesting that these "passage graves" were never intended for burials, and certainly not for burials of chieftains. On the most prominent Jersey site, he comments: “the bones are scattered in the passage and chamber with no apparent organisation, as at La Hougue Bie, Jersey”..

In fact, on many sites in Britain and Europe, over the Neolithic period, these tombs were opened and new interments made. One site had five different methods of burial for only twice that number of people.

So if these sites were not tombs, what were they for? Mark Patton suggest that a useful analogy is that of churches and cathedrals. He argues: "If one were to excavate Westminster Abbey, one would find human bones, as in most cathedrals and churches, yet Westminster Abbey, although it contains burials, would not in itself be described as a tomb or mausoleum", and suggests that we look at the dolmens in this light. The historian Ronald Hutton comes to much the same conclusion, that these sites were mainly used as religious centres, and each would have been a "focus for a group of scattered farms or a settlement, bonded as a clan or family" - very much a precursor to the idea of a "parish".

So how are to understand the dolmens. Mark Patton suggests that we can imagine the tribes coming together, for various significant times of the year, to celebrate in ritual the passage of the seasons.