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Updated: June 15, 2025
In the best known example at Los Millares there are remains of a semicircular façade in front of the entrance, as in many other megalithic monuments. Corridor-tomb at Los Millares, Spain. The finest, however, of all the Spanish monuments is the corridor-tomb of Antequera in Andalusia. It consists of a short passage leading into a long rectangular chamber roofed with four slabs.
In fact, all that may be said of the Algerian graves is that some are of the iron age, while others may be and probably are earlier. In Tunis the dolmen is not uncommon, and several groups or cemeteries have been reported. Near Ellez occurs a type of corridor-tomb in which three dolmen-like chambers lie on either side of a central passage, and a seventh at the end opposite to the entrance.
In the south it would be intolerably close, and its low passage besides serving no purpose would be inconvenient. There is really no reason to derive either the dolmen or the corridor-tomb from dwellings at all. Granted the use of huge stones, both are purely natural forms, and the presence of the corridor in the latter is dictated by necessity.
The skulls are in some cases trepanned, i.e. small round pieces of the bone have been cut out of them; such pieces are sometimes found separate in the graves. No objects of metal occur in these North French tombs. There are many fine examples in Brittany of the corridor-tomb with distinct chamber. It is covered by a tumulus nearly 200 feet in diameter.
In Sweden it is never found far from the sea-coast. Corridor-tomb, Ottagården, Sweden. The corridor-tomb is also frequent in Denmark and Sweden, though it is unknown in Norway. In Sweden it is, like all megalithic monuments, confined to the south of the country. Of the early transition type with elementary corridor there are fine examples at Herrestrup in Denmark and Torebo in Sweden.
They are dolmens of ordinary type, except that in some cases the walls are formed not of upright slabs, but of stones roughly superposed one upon another. On the farm of the Grassi, near Lecce, are what appear to be two small dolmens at a distance of only 4 feet apart; they are perhaps parts of a single corridor-tomb.
These early corridor-tombs are evidently not the work of the Ainu, the aborigines of Japan, but of the Japanese invaders who conquered them. These latter do not seem to have brought the idea of megalithic building with them, as their earlier tombs are simple mounds. As no dolmen has yet been found in Japan we cannot at present derive the corridor-tomb there from it.
Perhaps the most typical structure in France is the corridor-tomb in which the chamber is indistinguishable from the passage, and the whole forms a long rectangular area. This is the allée couverte in the narrower sense. A remarkable example in Brittany known as Les Pierres Plates turns at a sharp angle in the middle, and is thus elbow-shaped.
The true dolmen is extremely rare in Germany, and only occurs in small groups in particular localities. The corridor-tomb with a distinct chamber is also very exceptional, especially east of the Elbe. The most usual type of megalithic tomb is that known as the Hünenbett or Riesenbett.
Thus the famous Kit's Coty House in Kent was certainly not a dolmen, though it is now impossible to say what its form was. Wayland the Smith's Cave was probably a three-chambered corridor-tomb covered with a mound. The famous Men-an-tol in Cornwall may well be all that is left of a chamber-tomb of some kind. It is a slab about 3-1/2 feet square, in which is a hole 1-1/2 feet in diameter.
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