Armorican Tumulus culture

Nevertheless, there are more than a thousand Bronze Age tumuli in the region, many of them exceptionally richly endowed burials of chieftains of the time.

This thesis lacked a serious basis in typo-chronology, and has gradually been contradicted: the same types of dagger are found in both series and radiocarbon dating attests that they are contemporaneous.

During the Bell Beaker period, the development of individual burials may be observed, and this became widespread during the Early Bronze Age.

[1] A strong social hierarchy is demonstrated through the funerary deposits: fine arrowheads, bronze weapons, gold artefacts, and exotic ornaments are largely reserved for the elite; bronze daggers and ceramics seem to distinguish a class of notables (heads of lineages or clans), while the majority did not deliver any grave goods that have been preserved.

The Armorican Tumulus culture are famous for their tombs of chiefs, richly endowed with prestigious goods deposited in wooden boxes.

They deliver dozens of so-called Armorican arrowheads finely cut in blond flint from the Lower Turonian deposits of the Cher valley.

[8] Along with his arrows are bronze daggers and axes, the former being kept in leather scabbards and sometimes decorated with small gold studs (1 to 3 mm).

On the island of Molène (Finistère), the house of Beg ar Loued shows the evolution of a dry stone construction between the end of the Bell Beaker culture and the Early Bronze Age.

The people grew cereals (bare and dressed barley, emmer and wheat ) and legumes ( beans and peas), raised beef, pork, sheep (and perhaps goat) and practiced coastal fishing (collection of limpets on the foreshore and probably making use of fishing dams) but also hunting (grey seal, seabirds) .