Dolmen

Dolmen (from the Celtic words daul, 'a table,' and maen, 'a stone') is a modern term applied in archaeology to the megalithic framework of the chambers of chambered cairns, which often survive the removal of the covering mounds of stones and earth for agricultural or other utilitarian purposes, or which may never have been completely enveloped in such a covering. In England, such constructions, consisting of three or more stone props supporting a massive roof stone, were formerly styled Cronlechs (q.v.), but this use of the term is now obsolete. The best-known English dolmen is that known as Kits Coity House, near Aylesford, in Kent. The term dolmen is almost universally employed on the Continent to designate not only the denuded megaliths of a sepulchral chamber, but the whole construction, inclusive of the covering mound or cairn. It is thus synonymous with the descriptive appellation of chambered Cairn (q.v.), and may be taken as a generic name for such sepulchral constructions of the stone age. In France there are no less than 3410 more or less complete dolmens in the wider sense of the term, many of these in Brittany.