Tomb or Temple? Above is a plan of the Neolithic tomb or temple at Gavr'inis, an island in the Gulf of Morbihan in southern Brittany, marking the position of the stone from which the border was taken. Opinions differ as to whether Gavr'inis was a tomb or a temple; possibly it was both...

In 2000, I finally made it to Gavr'inis: My imagination was fired by some of our guode's interpretations: The visit was personal - this page describes instead some of the theories aboutthe place. Whether or not the actual date was significant, the builders made good use of the sunrise around midwinter to illuminate the decoration in a scene which I find extremely reminiscent of the classical tales of Persephone's descent into the underworld and of the Goddess resting for half of the year...

One school of thought sees every maze, tomb and cave as a link with a generic Goddess figure. Some undoubtedly were Goddess sites and this particularly spectacular example at Gavr'inis is, for my money, a good candidate. There are similar structures all over the Celtic area, at, for example, Stoney Littleton near Bath, England, Maes Howe on Orkney and Tarxien on Malta.

The hooped and whorled decorations on the stones at Gavr'inis were added after the stones had been selected. Many researchers and commentators have suggested that the patterns represent aspects of the feminine. Certainly others in the area are more clear cut, although whether they represent a Goddess is more open to question.

More recent work by archæologists such as Bradley and, later, Scarre, suggest that the patterns may be linked to entoptic phenomena and thus may indicate shamanic activity. Of course, the suggestion of entoptic patterns doesn't necessarily mean that they were not construed as being feminine by the people of the time

Some of the stones which form part of the Gavr'inis temple were re-used. One was broken and the other half used at another site fifteen kilometers away. Some re-used stones already had decorations which might indicate that they were used as place-markers. The new decorations were added in such a way as to avoid obliterating the earlier images.