It lasted from around 3100 to 2000 BCE and is most famous for its gallery grave megalithic tombs, which incorporate a port-hole slab separating the entrance from the main burial chamber.
In the chalk valley of the River Marne, rock-cut tombs (hypogea) were dug to a similar design.
[1] Diagnostic artefacts include transverse arrowheads, antler sleeves and crude, flat-based cylindrical and bucket-shaped pottery decorated with appliqué cordons.
The culture seems to have had strong links with other areas and may have arisen from a composite of influences as indicated by the gallery grave design common across Europe and the pottery types which have comparators in Western France from 2600BC and also in Brittany, Switzerland and Denmark.
[2] Two males buried in the Pierre Fritte dolmen (Yermenonville, Eure et Loire department) had the same mitochondrial haplogropup K and Y-DNA haplogroup I2a1.