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Recent excavations in the causeway enclosures in the Charente Basin are providing an opportunity to review the chronological and functional problems and queries concerning this type of site. However the numerous questions are still largely outnumbered by the newly acquired answers. Set mostly on gentle hills and often circular, they are in number well over one hundred. Showing multiple occupations, severely eroded, their palimpsest plans have been altered even modified preventing to associate with certainty a type of plan to a precise cultural phase. Amongst these indecipherable plans we tentatively suggest to distinguish two broad categories based on one part on the space bound modality (either only human or adapted to landscape availability) and on the other of the plan of enclosures (single enclosure, enclosure divided in two zones and adjoined or imbricated enclosures). These enclosures have often preserved, albeit slight, indication of reorganisation of entrances of which the so-called " crab-claws " are the most spectacular. The segmented ditches were essentially meant to be used as quarries to meet a permanent need of material for the repairing of banks or ramparts and this accounts for their strictly adhesion to the original plan. The infillings, natural or human, are difficult to interpret as ditches were often re-cut for a secondary use such as burial place. The artefacts can result from deliberate deposits, not easy to prove, or remnants of activity in or in proximity of the ditch, but most of the time indicate rubbish disposals. Before the Artenac we do not have direct testimony of banks or ramparts but empty spaces along the inner side of ditches indirectly suggest their existence. Built structures or place of human activities, which certainly were present inside the enclosures, are completely unknown. When buildings have been recognised their strict association with the causeways is not demonstrated. Finally we have to insist on the fact that so far no causeway nor the total area of an enclosure have been entirely excavated.

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In 1999, after the felling of the pine trees which had covered and protected it until then, this long barrow presented a breach, evidence of the early 20th-century exploration of the monument. It was decided merely to clear this trench in order to define the barrow 's internal structure and verify the presence of a possible burial chamber before filling in the breach to consolidate the tumulus. The exceptional state of conservation of a monument which is not at present under threat and presents architectural characteristics which are, if not unique, at least too rarely attested, induced us to preserve this long barrow without carrying out any extensive excavations. No trace of a funerary chamber was revealed in this south-western end, which is both the highest and widest part of the monument. On the other hand, the investigation has revealed a specific method of construction for the monument, known in the British Isles but rarely represented in France and nowhere as well preserved. A central dome composed only of superposed turfs forms the core of the monument, and may have held a burial which has since disappeared. It is topped with a second covering, which we consider to be closely associated with the dome and more or less contemporary with it, composed of a grid of turf partitions which mark out quadrangular compartments filled with pulverulent limestone. Sedimentological analysis has not enabled us to follow in detail the history of the barrow s construction, but has shed considerable light on its composition. No archaeological artefacts associated with the monument's period of construction have been discovered, but two C14 dates on anthropological material place the erection of this monumental sepulchre around 4500 ВС.