Stonehenge Cursus Stonehenge Cursus 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 long and between and wide. Excavations in 2007 dated the construction of the earthwork to between 3630 and 3375 BCE, several hundred years before the earliest phase of Stonehenge in 3000 BC. The cursus, along with adjacent barrows and the nearby 'Lesser Cursus' are part of the National Trust's Stonehenge Landscape property, and is within the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site. Cursus comes from the Latin for 'racecourse'. Early antiquarians
Stonehenge replicas and derivatives of postholes for standing timbers, discovered in 1922, was named Woodhenge by its excavators because of similarities with Stonehenge. The name woodhenge is also used for a series of timber circles found at the Native American site of Cahokia (Cahokia Woodhenge). The timber Seahenge in Norfolk was named as such by journalists writing about its discovery in 1998. In November 2004, a diameter circle of postholes was found in Russia and publicised as the Russian Stonehenge. Other prehistoric sites elsewhere, often also with proposed astronomical alignments, are often described by journalists as being that region's '"answer to Stonehenge". In May