In Central and South France the allees couvertes are mostly of a semi-subterranean type, i.e. they are cut in the ground and merely roofed with slabs of stone.  The most famous is that of the Grotte des Fees near Arles (Fig. 12), in which a passage (a) with a staircase at one end and two niches (b b) in its sides leads into a narrow rectangular chamber (c).  The total length is nearly 80 feet.  Another tomb of the same type, La Grotte du Castellet, contained over a hundred skeletons, together with thirty-three flint arrow or spear-heads, one of which was stuck fast in a human vertebra, a bell-shaped cup, axes of polished stone, beads and pendants of various materials, 114 pieces of callais, and a small plaque of gold.

On the plateau of Ger near the town of Dax are large numbers of mounds, some of which contain cremated bodies in urns and others megalithic tombs.  Bertrand saw in this a cemetery of two different peoples living side by side.  But it has since been shown that the cremation mounds belong to a much later period than those which contain megalithic graves.  In these last the skeletons were found seated around the walls of the chamber accompanied by objects of flint and other stone, beads of callais, and small gold ornaments.

[Illustration:  FIG. 12.  Plan and section of La Grotte des Fees, Arles,
               France (Materiaux pour l’histoire de l’homme, 1873).]

[Illustration:  FIG. 13.  The so-called dolmen-deity, from the tombs of
               the Petit Morin. (After de Baye.)]

France has also its rock-hewn tombs, for in the valley of the Petit-Morin is a series of such graves.  A trench leads down to the entrance, which is closed by a slab.  The chamber itself is completely underground.  In the shallower tombs were either two rows of bodies with a passage between or separate layers parted by slabs or strata of sand.  In the deeper were seldom more than eight bodies, in the extended or contracted position, with tools and weapons of flint, pots, and beads of amber and of callais.  On the walls were rough sculptures of human figures (Fig. 13), to which we shall have to return later.

The Channel Islands possess megalithic monuments not unlike those of Brittany.  They are corridor-tombs covered with a mound and often surrounded by a circle of stones.  Within the chamber, which is usually round, lies, under a layer of shells, a mass of mingled human and animal bones.  The bodies had been buried in the sitting position, and with them lay objects of stone and bone, but none of metal.