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Prunieres presented to the French Association, when it met at Bordeaux, a collection of weapons and ornaments which came from the megalithic monuments of Lozere.
Prunieres, speaking in this connection, "we can make out the fractures set with a neatness which gives us a very high opinion of the skill of the Neolithic bone setters. The setting of one fracture at the lower end of the tibia and of another at the neck of the femur, are not inferior to what we should expect from the most skilful surgeons of the globe."
Thanks to the learned researches of Dr. Prunieres we are able to trace for a great length of time the modes of sepulture adopted in Lozere.
Prunieres; that of New Grange, in Ireland, surmounted by a cromlech of stones of considerable size, many of them brought from a distance; that of Hellstone, near Dorchester, consisting of nine upright stones supporting a table more than twenty-seven and a half feet in circumference, seven feet wide and two and a half thick.
Prunieres there collected forty stone hatchets, differing in no material respect from others found in such numbers elsewhere, with flint knives and scrapers, bone stilettos, and millstones, doubtless used for grinding grain, all of which are to the learned French professor proofs of the existence there of a Neolithic station before the historic period.
Prunieres added fresh details about other rounded pieces of skull that be had discovered let into crania, some of which pieces had evidently been introduced during the life of the patient, who had died under the operation of trepanation, whilst others had been put in after death. Dr.
Prunieres also mentions having found in the cave known as that of L'HOMME MORT bones bearing traces of cicatrized wounds, and he presented to the Scientific Congress at Clermont a human vertebra found beneath the Aumede dolmen pierced with an arrow-head, which is, so to speak, encased in the wound by the formation of bony tissue.
It is strange indeed to find that incineration was practised from Neolithic times in the wild mountains of Lozere. There can be no doubt on the point, however, and excavations beneath the dolmen of Marconnieres strikingly confirm the earlier discoveries of Dr. Prunieres.
In Brittany and in Marne flints foreign to these granite districts are numerous; and Dr. Prunieres tells us that similar discoveries were made under the megalithic monuments of France, and that neither in the eroded limestone districts of Lozere, known locally as LES CAUSSES, nor under the dolmens of Haute-Vienne, were found any but implements made of rock not native to the country.
Were these offerings to the dead, or to the infernal deities, given to them in the hope of propitiating them in favor of the deceased? Beneath the megalith of Saint Jean d'Alcas were found beads of blue glass and of enamel which Dr. Prunieres, having compared with those in the Campana collection in the Louvre, thinks are of Phoenician origin.