A prehistoric megalithic burial chamber of a type found chiefly in western Europe, with a passage leading to the exterior. Passage graves were originally covered by a mound, which in many cases has disappeared, and most date from the Neolithic period.
Some of these represent developments of earlier traditions, as for example the round barrows and passage graves whose ancestry lies in the early Neolithic.
The field site contains over 45 stone circles, passage graves, standing stones and dolmen tombs and has been the focus of excavations for more than twenty years.
We still wonder how the ancient Egyptians raised giant obelisks in the desert and how stone age men and women moved huge cut stones and placed them in position in dolmens and passage graves.
The Neolithic passage grave, or allée couverte, at Les Fades (also known as Le Palet-de-Roland), is at 24 m. the longest in Southern France; the mound that originally covered it was 36 m. long.
Similar carvings appear at Newgrange, a megalithic passage grave near Dublin in County Meath, which also dates from the fourth millennium B.C.E.
The megalithic monuments of Malta have been known since the last century, and they used to be grouped with the other megalithic monuments of Europe, such as the passage graves of the Atlantic seaboard, or Stonehenge and Avebury in Britain.
The passage grave was originally within a stone circle, twelve pillars of which still survive.
La Hougue Bie at Grouville is dominated by a massive burial mound dating from 3800BC, complete with Neolithic passage graves, medieval chapel and a memorial to the slave workers of the Second World War.
Archaeologists have found over 65 tombs, stone circles, passage graves and standing stones.
Or perhaps they will consider whether it augments sounds, as in Irish passage graves, so that a drum in the tunnel can be heard in the snug of the Rusty Trowel in Amesbury.