Vanessa Riesgo González (Member no: 184)

Mendiluze cromlech

The Basque cromlech was a monument made by the pastoral communities that carried out their activity in our mountains during the end of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age

The Mendiluze cromlech was discovered and excavated in the early 1980s in the fields of Legaire, in the Sierra de Entzia, (Araba, Spanish Basque Country).

It's composed of a circle of small stones in which four large menhirs stand out. The circle of stones has a diameter of 10.5m and the menhirs have different heights ranging from 0.75m to 2.5m in height. It also found an internal structure in the form of a rectangular cist that contained remains of bones and coals.

The studies of the archaeologists established that the Basque cromlech was a monument made by the pastoral communities that carried out their activity in our mountains during the end of the Bronze Age and the Iron Age (approx. 1000 years BC).

The monument is about 2700 years old and the inhabitants of the area were buried in it.

It is included in the Campas de Legaire Megalithic Park, a karstic plain in which numerous megalithic constructions have been catalogued: 14 menhirs, 70 burial mounds, 3 dolmens and 1 circle of stones. A few kilometers from the plain are the Sorginetxe dolmen and the Aizkomendi dolmen, two of the megalithic jewels of the Basque Country.