Edition: U.S. / Global

Ancient Tombs In Timeless Landscapes

Published: October 13, 2002

IGNORING the gusty wind, I balanced my camera on the roof of my rented Ford, pressed the self-timer button and ran like crazy. The resulting photo, a little off-center, shows some spidery hedgerows, pastureland and me, arms flung wide in victory as if I were showing off big game, my shadow rippling across a giant granite boulder. What you can't see is that the massive, mottled stone, the color and texture of elephant hide, is actually a capstone sitting atop squat stone legs.

It's part of a dolmen -- a prehistoric tomb made of stone slabs called megaliths -- and I had been hunting it and its kind in a nub of south-central France still most aptly known by its old names: Quercy and Rouergue. (Quercy lies primarily northwest of Toulouse, Rouergue northeast; together they share portions of the modern départements of Aveyron, Lot and Tarn-et-Garonne.)

Before going to France last spring to research Romanesque churches in the region, I read an aside in a guidebook stating that there were more than 500 dolmens in Lot alone, dating from 2500 to 1500 B.C. A little more poking turned up a staggering claim: the limestone plateaus, or causses, of southern France and nearby river valleys are home to the greatest concentration of dolmens in Europe. Forget the standing stones at Carnac in Brittany, or the grandeur of Stonehenge; for sheer numbers, this was the place to be, With 800 dolmens documented in Quercy and 1,000 in Rouergue, the lure of prehistory was too great to ignore, and I decided to dedicate a portion of my trip to dolmen-hunting.

I found 10. That may not sound terribly impressive, but I limited myself to one weekend and a fairly small area. Besides, tombs from the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, aren't on everyone's vacation agenda, which means that while you'll find plenty of brochures outlining foie gras and truffle tours -- two other specialties of the region -- dolmen maps are harder to come by (although the tombs themselves are well marked on both highways and footpaths). This means that dolmen-spotting in Quercy-Rouergue quickly assumes the aspect of a treasure hunt.

You probably won't locate every dolmen you set out to find; but you probably won't care. The search leads you through landscapes so beautiful they defeat expectations of the word: textured uplands of scrub oak mottled with outcrops and rare wildflowers, and river valleys of gentle, easygoing greens and elegant stone villages, webbed together by tawny, twiggy windbreaks and gashes of oxblood earth.

I began my quest in Espalion, where the road dust was the color of rare beef and my hotel, the Moderne, had an inspired restaurant called l'Eau Vive, which specializes in river fish (though I had pork, an option conveyed to me, after language failed, by a resounding snort from my waitress). Espalion is a thriving market town about 20 miles northeast of Rodez on the Lot River. It is separated from the Aveyron River to the south by a high, hump-backed ridge.

On a mild Saturday morning, I corkscrewed in a rented car over the top of the ridge and down into the Aveyron Valley, intent on following a four-hour, rural car route outlined in a brochure produced by the tourist office in nearby Sévérac-le-Château, which promised to lead me to 17 dolmens.

About 15 minutes west of Sévérac-le-Chateau, I found what looked like the outline of a reclining peanut on legs atop a directional arrow. It was a sign to the Dolmen of Buzeins, a half-mile down a path flecked with sheep droppings and wildflowers.

My heart leapt when I spooked a quail out of a hedgerow; otherwise, there was only silence and solitude and pastures so green they seemed to vibrate. The rolling landscape looked like Wales, stretched out in a more generous geography.

I found the dolmen before I knew it: a curiosity in the center of a field, strewn about with small stones like a gaggle of offspring. It was a knock-kneed little tomb, its two supports leaning together but the flat capstone still firmly in place, level as a tabletop. All three megaliths were fuzzy with golden lichen, and radiated the morning's sun.

Less than 10 minutes later, I located the Dolmen de Galitorte alongside a secondary farm road. Like many of its mates, it sat on a sloping rise rather than atop a hill. The earth around it was the same shade of dark caramel as the cows grazing nearby. When I stuck my head inside -- the dolmen was open at both ends, forming a perfect man-made cave -- the sound of cowbells echoed off the granite in a convincing impression that I was hearing the distant past.

Throughout the day, my route wound like ribbon candy along the Aveyron, which I repeatedly crossed and recrossed. More recent constructions competed for my attention: fieldstone barns roofed in gills of gray slate that from a distance looked like shiny, braided leather. In pristine villages -- Biounac, Buzeins, St.-Amans-de-Varès -- I found no people, no incidental colors or signs or plantings, only textured stone, white shutters and pavilion roofs whose edges curled up ever so slightly in a stylish wink.