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The Stonehenge Cursus (sometimes known as the Greater Cursus) is a large Neolithic cursus monument on Salisbury plain, near to Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England. It is roughly 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) long and between 100 metres (330 ft) and 150 metres (490 ft) wide.
The name 'cursus' was suggested in 1723 by William Stukeley, the antiquarian, who compared the Stonehenge cursus to a Roman chariot-racing track, or circus. [3] Stonehenge Cursus, Wiltshire. Cursuses range in length from 50 yards (46 m) to almost 6 miles (9.7 km). The distance between the parallel earthworks can be up to 100 yards (91 m).
In the cursus ditch fill, he also found a piece of Welsh stone, incorrectly described as a fragment from the Cosheston Beds of Milford Haven. Coupled with the finds of bluestone fragments found between the cursus and Stonehenge, Stone hypothesised that an earlier bluestone monument, predating the megalithic stages of Stonehenge, had stood near ...
Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) in Wiltshire, England. The WHS covers two large areas of land separated by about 24 kilometres (15 mi), rather than a specific monument or building.
Stonehenge is effectively Britain's largest third millennium BC cemetery, containing 52 cremation burials and many other fragments of both burnt and unburnt bone. [6] Many of the cremation deposits contained more than one individual, so that an estimate of the number of people buried here during that period may be between 150 and 240.
The Cursus Barrows is the name given to a Neolithic and Bronze Age round barrow cemetery lying mostly south of the western end of the Stonehenge Cursus, in Wiltshire, England. The cemetery contains around 18 barrows scattered along an east-to-west ridge, although some of the mounds are no longer visible.
The site includes many large ancient structures including a cursus, henges, burial grounds and settlements. They are thought to have been part of a Neolithic and Bronze Age 'ritual landscape' comparable to Salisbury Plain and date from between 3500 and 2500 BC. The monument complex has been called 'The Stonehenge of the North'.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the estate was the scene of the Stonehenge Free Festival. Damage to monuments such as the Cursus barrows was one of the reasons that the festival was banned in 1985. As part of the World Heritage Site Management Plan for Stonehenge, some 340 hectares of the land will revert to chalk grassland by 2011. The scheme (one ...