Megaliths galore

Extract

The Inventaire des mégalithes de la France—Région Parisienne is the fourth in the French series which began with Cordier's inventory of Indre-et-Loire (1963) and continued with Gruet's inventory of Maine-et-Loire (1967) and Despride and Leymarios's inventory of Loir-et-Cher (1974). All these have been published as supplements to Gallia Préhistoire and we are now promised a fifth volume by Jean Clottes on the megaliths of the Lot. The present volume is by far the biggest and most important in the series so far and it deals with the monuments in the present six departments of Paris, Yvelines, Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de- Marne, and Val d'Oise, which used to be the departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise.

The author of this inventory is an English civil servant, now in high international office in Brussels, who formerly was in Paris and there spent his week-ends picnicking in megaliths, and what better employment could there be for our international civil servants? As he says, with characteristic modesty, of his Paris days, ‘Au commencement vers 1955 ou 1956, la prtparation de cet inventaire servait uniquement de distraction pour mes moments perdus et n'avait aucune prétention. Ce ne fut que beaucoup plus tard qu'il m'a été suggéré de le proposer à la présente série. La distraction transformée en devoir, c'est alors que le travail a commencé pour de bon.’