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Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders by T. Eric (Thomas Eric) Peet
page 55 of 151 (36%)
in length. The façade is slightly concave. A low door (_a_) gives access
through a narrow slab-roofed passage (_b_) to a long rectangular chamber
(_c_), the method of whose roofing is uncertain. All the _naus_ are
built with their façades to the south or south-east, with the exception
of that of Benigaus Nou, the inner end of which is cut in the rock,
while the outer part is built up of blocks as usual. The abnormal
orientation was here clearly determined by the desire to make use of the
face of rock in the construction. The _naus_ seem to have been tombs, as
human remains have been found in them.

Rock-tombs also occur in the islands. The most remarkable are those of
S. Vincent in Majorca. One of these has a kind of open antechamber cut
in the rock, and is exactly similar in plan to the Grotte des Fées in
France (cf. Fig. 12).

Prehistoric villages surrounded by great stone walls can still be traced
in the Balearic Isles. The houses were of two types, built either above
ground or below. The first are square or rectangular with rounded
corners, the base course occasionally consisting of orthostatic slabs.
The subterranean dwellings are faced with stone and roofed with flat
slabs supported by columns. In each village was one building of a
different type. It stood above ground and was semicircular in plan. In
its centre stood a horizontal slab laid across the top of an upright,
forming a T-shaped structure which helped to support the roof-slabs, but
which may also have had some religious significance. The stones which
composed it were always carefully worked, and the lower was let into a
socket on the under side of the upper.



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