Learning to read minor symbols

The bow is only found on two other monuments in Brittany, but the Gavrinis specimen is the most elaborate of them.

The weapon at rest takes up the front part of pillar 24, combined with two parallel lines (probably arrows), a bandeau decorated with chevrons (an esparto-grass quiver?) and two axe heads.

This set can be made out in the darkness, from the monument entrance, and can be interpreted as a warning sign for intruders.

Draped motifs and snake-like figures. There are undulating or broken line groups on several slabs (numbers 4 and 5 in particular), and on other monuments like Petit-Mont at Arzon.

Interpretation remains tentative (are they merely decorative or do they represent wall coverings?). However, a bulge in the head area sometimes recalls the image of a snake.

Three reptiles appear to be shown on the base of slab 8, in a standing position, framed by images of axes (paired-blade axes on the left, a handled and single blade tool on the right).

The "spirals". There is nothing really equivalent to these motifs anywhere else in Armorica. However, they have often mistakenly been compared to Irish New-Grange Art for instance.

In Gavrinis, pillar 25 displays the only possible true spiral; the others are double knotworks (on slabs 17 and 18), a "pseudo-spiral" with a discontinuous line (slab 6) or boxed crescents roughly opposed, as in a "mirror image", on both sides of a median line (slabs 4 and 20).

Any interpretation of these motifs remains pure speculation. "Pseudo-spiral" on pillar 6