The covered passage or allée couverte may terminate in a small chamber, made by partitioning off the end of the passage by means of one or more menhirs or supports, so that there would seem to be no sharp line of distinction between the dolmen and the covered passage, each perhaps at times being a modification of the other.
The dolmen seems to be always sepulchral and, as the final resting place of the earthly remains of a chief or a line of important rulers, it must have been regarded as sacred and an object of veneration. At all events it was covered with an elaborate tumulus.
The stone cist appears to be, as a rule, of later age than the dolmen, but was likewise the receptacle of the remains of the dead and was covered with a tumulus or galgal. The great tumulus of Mont Saint Michel at Carnac, which in its eastern part seems to be composed of small stones and thus to be in the nature of a galgal, contains a number of dolmens and stone cists or cists-veu, as they are called in Brittany. A tunnel which has been driven near the base at the eastern end for the purpose of exploration has brought to view dolmens and stone cists with their contents of human bones, ashes, stone implements and ornaments, including some jadeite axes and a collar of white pearls.
The alignments seem to have more of a religious than a mortuary significance, and are associated with the cromlechs or stone circles. The great circular temple of Avebury in England had originally a double row of menhirs leading away from it on two opposite sides.
