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The area I consists of only half an ellipse, the southern half being replaced by the area H, which we have already described. It has a rectangular niche to the west containing a fine trilithon with a cover-slab nearly 10 feet long.
It must be remembered that most if not all the monuments we shall describe were originally covered by mounds of earth, though in most cases these have disappeared. The simple dolmen is found in almost all parts of the country. Its single cover-slab is supported by a varying number of uprights, sometimes as few as three, oftener four or more.
The dolmens, which are of carefully chosen flat blocks showing no trace of work, are all rectangular in plan, and usually consist of four side-walls and a cover-slab. The finest of all, however, the dolmen of Fontanaccia, has seven blocks supporting the cover, one at each short end, three in one of the long sides, and two in the other. None of the dolmens are covered by mounds.
The dolmen itself is, of course, built directly on to the platform, and the space between it and the circle is filled up with rough stones. The orientation of the dolmens varied considerably, but the cover-slab was never placed in such a way that its length ran up the hill-slope, probably because in moving the slab into place this would have been an awkward position.
They occur nearly always on the upper surface of the cover-slab, very rarely on its under surface or on the side-walls. Some have attempted to show that these pits are purely natural and not artificial. It has been suggested, for instance, that they are simply the casts of a species of fossil sea-urchin which has weathered out from the surface of the stone.
Many of the slabs are slightly slanting, and it has been suggested that the series of holes and furrows was intended for the pouring a libation of some kind. In a monument of this type at Ammân the cover-slab slopes considerably; the upper part of its surface is a network of small channels converging on a hole 11 inches deep about the centre of the slab.
The method can even be used on a slight uphill gradient. It requires less dragging and more vertical raising than the other, and would thus be more useful where oxen were unobtainable. When the stones were once on the spot it is not hard to imagine how they were set upright with levers and ropes. The placing of the cover-slab was, however, a more complicated matter.
The earliest type appears to be the simple dolmen with either four or five sides and a very rough cover-slab. This and the upper part of the sides remained uncovered by the mound of earth which was always heaped round the tomb. In later times the dolmen became more regularly rectangular in shape, and only its roof-block appeared above the mound.
Most of them lie east and west, and are broader at the west. In the eastern slab there is often a hole about 2 feet in diameter. Near Tsîl are several corridor-tombs of simple type. Each consists of a long rectangular chamber with only one cover-slab, that being at the west end. In a well-known example of this type at Kosseir there is a hole in one of the two uprights which support the cover.
At Eguilaz in the Basque provinces is a fine corridor-tomb, in which a passage 20 feet long, roofed with flat slabs, leads to a rectangular chamber 13 feet by 15 with an immense cover-slab nearly 20 feet in length: the whole was covered with a mound of earth. The chamber contained human bones and "lanceheads of stone and bronze." A famous tomb of a similar type exists at Marcella in Algarve.
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