Painted engravings found at a Prehistoric tomb in northwest France prove that the practice of painting megaliths was more widespread in Western Europe than previously thought. Spanish and French researchers used cutting-edge technology to uncover the paintings at the Cairn of Barnenez in Brittany. Created between the fifth and third millennia BC, most of Western Europe’s painted megalithic art is found in the Iberian Peninsula. Scholars had previously thought that most sites further north – from France to Scandinavia – only featured engraved motifs. “The evidence for painted megalithic tombs in Brittany opens a new panorama of European megalithic art,” says the project’s lead archaeologist Primitiva Bueno Ramírez.
The team used digital photography to enhance pigments in areas of suspected paint, revealing geometric shapes, zigzags and waves in black and red. Pigment analysis revealed that the Prehistoric people of Brittany used pigment “recipes” to create artificial colours that were similar to those used by the ancient Iberians, suggesting that the populations of Iberia and Brittany interacted. Similarities in the painted motifs also indicate the sharing of ideas.
The research, published in the journal Antiquity, also suggests that the megalithic tombs were used over long periods of time; in places, paintings were overlaid with engravings, and then with further paint. “[The paintings] complete the engravings,” says Bueno Ramírez, adding that the discovery of several phases of paintings and engravings shows the decoration was maintained while the site was in use.