The James Miln - Zacharie Le Rouzic Museum of Prehistory of Carnac, created in 1881, is an archaeological museum, located in a former presbytery, which contains a rich collection of more than 6600 archaeological objects.
The museum offers a chronological tour of more than 450,000 years of history, from the Palaeolithic to the Gallo-Roman period. The tour is mainly devoted to the Neolithic period, from 4,900 to 2,200 BC. It is dedicated to the construction of the megaliths, to the parietal art, to the daily life of our ancestors and to the evolution of the funerary architecture since dolmens with corridor and covered alleys.
It is considered as the first museum in the world on megalithism and has the labels "Musée de France" and "Monument historique".
The birth of this museum is due to the work of James Miln, a Scottish scholar, and Zacharie Le Rouzic, an archaeologist from Carnac. After devoting his career to the study of the megaliths of Scotland and Brittany, James Miln hired the young Zacharie Le Rouzic in 1873 to begin excavations on the megalithic site of Carnac. It was at this time that Zacharie Le Rouzic began his initiation into the art of archaeological excavation and research.
Following the death of James Miln in 1881, his entire collection of archaeological objects was bequeathed to the town. It was his brother Robert Miln who decided to build a museum to display his collection. Zacharie Le Rouzic, then the museum's caretaker, undertook to continue James Miln's work and thanks to his investment, his research, his discoveries, but also his work of conservation, classification and the writing of internationally recognised works, he contributed in large part to the enrichment of the Carnac museum. At his death in 1927, he also donated his own collection.
The museum can be visited freely or with a guide. It is ideal to anticipate a visit to the various megalithic sites around Carnac. Other activities are also organised by the Museum of Prehistory: hikes on the megalithic sites, "initiation to excavation" courses, workshops for children, temporary exhibition with a game trail for children, conferences, demonstrations of prehistoric techniques...
