Grand menhir and statue-menhir The Pla de les Pruneres menhir in Mollet has the form of a rectangular prism, with rounded edges and one of the two ends pointed. It is 4.90 m long and 70 cm by 120 cm wide (Figure 7). In the Mediterranean regions, there are few known menhirs which are as big as, or bigger than, this one. We can mention the menhir of the Plateau des Bondons (Lozère), which exceeds 6 m in length, and that of the Counozouls (Aude) which, at 8.90 m long, holds the record among the menhirs in the south of France (Costa 2008: 9091). Similarly, if this is compared with the so-called statuemenhirs known in these same regions, the Mollet menhir is one of the tallest, if not the tallest. The largest ones are found in the Tarn region in the south of France, which correspond to the so-called Rouergue group (subgroup of the Saintponiennes), some of which are more than 4 m high. The Pierre Plantée de Lacaune in particular is 4.50 m high, and many of them have been used for centuries as small bridges over streams (Arnal 1976b: 218; Costa 2008: 100). The Applied Research Group for Historical Heritage at the University of Barcelona carried out, as we have mentioned, a petrographic study on the Pla de les Pruneres menhir. According to this study, it is a granite-like stone, presenting the components of granite. An abundant presence of centimetric enclaves of green phyllite, which is a metamorphic rock with a low level of metamorphism, indicates, however, its sedimentary origin, thus allowing us to determine that it is an arkose, a rock formed by the erosion of granites with little or no transportation. In the case of the Mollet menhir, given the presence of biotite particles, the distance between the sites of erosion of the original granites and that of the formation of the arkose must have been very short. The biotite is very soft and it is altered relatively easily, in a way which, with even a relatively short transportation, its particles of millimetric measurements would have practically disappeared (Vendrell, Giráldez and Ventolà 2011: 163). An arkose of the dimensions of the menhir discovered in Pla de les Pruneres, currently, and there is nothing to suggest that the past would have been any different, does not exist within the municipality of Mollet, something which is confirmed by the absence of this rock among the stones which form the old basement of the Sant Vicenç church3. As such, at the time of placing its origin, we must think in a source area outside of this municipality, from which it would have to have been transported by man, since the large dimensions of the block of stone makes us reject a natural move resulting from fluvial input. According to the aforementioned Màrius Vendrell, Pilar Giráldez and Lourdes Ventolà, for the source area, which, as previously mentioned, had to be near to the outcrop of granite, it would be necessary to search at the foot of the Littoral or Prelittoral mountain ranges, where there are granites, together with phyllites and schists, the erosion and dismantling of which could have given place to deposits of arkose. For the moment, however, no possible extraction
point has been found, and the matter of the source area of the stone of the Pla de les Pruneres menhir remains open, although, according to the authors of the study, it could have been very small and have been affected by urbanistic pressure (Vendrell, Giráldez and Ventolà 2011: 163). The Mollet menhir is not a simple block of rough stone, since it presents signs of regularisation by roughening on almost its entire surface. This roughening must have been done, according to the marks preserved, with a hard, round-tipped object. On the other hand, on one of the two narrower sides, it presents a motif in relief and, on the opposite and equally narrow side, a whole series of other motif engravings or sculptings. Both these motifs, as well as the signs of regularisation, were able to be observed in detail once the clean up and restoration of the menhir was completed. We will first of all present the description of the reliefs and, subsequently, that of the sculpted motifs (Figure 8). The motifs in relief are found at approximately one metre from the end of the menhir. In these, we have been able to recognise what appears to be a human face, with the representation of the nose, straight line and following the longitudinal axis of the menhir, and the eyebrows, or supraciliaris arches, also in straight lines but transversal. The nose and eyebrows form a «T» shape. This T presents its lateral ends prolonged downwards, with a type of earring, also in relief but in a slightly lower level, which, from their shape and position, remind us of two bull horns. The nose, eyebrows and horns frame circular eyes also in relief. Above the line of the eyebrows, there was another motif in relief, conserved very incompletely, having been fully affected at the time of discovery of the menhir, which there is very little we can say about. The motifs in relief were obtained by repeatedly picking or hammering the surface of the menhir, leaving in reserve the elements which make them up (nose, eyebrows, horns, eyes, and the undetermined element above the eyebrows). The edges are rounded and its surface also presents traces of picking having taken place, perhaps earlier, and corresponds to a general treatment of the menhir surface. With regards to the engraved motifs which are found on the opposite side from the reliefs, these differ both for the elaboration technique and for their more schematic or abstract character. The incisions of the engravings have the «U» section, a section which corresponds to the engravings made by an object made of stone and not metal, in which case it would have resulted in a «V» form. The engravings should be obtained by roughing in linear form on the surface of the menhir, which had previously been prepared also by roughening. The roughening could have been made by a direct impact, with a blunt edged object, harder than the rock of the menhir (a river pebble or a polished stone tool), or by indirect impact, with the help of an intermediary object, also blunt edged and harder. In this way, a series of traces was obtained, both straight lined and curvilinear, which apparently were later seen regularised by abrasion on its internal part, while it is also possible that this regularisation was the result of a very heavy roughening and the abra-
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