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 Cursus was excavated by John Thurnam in 1868, recovering an ox skull and some secondary inhumations. The barrow has since been levelled and is now underneath a bridleway running along King Barrow Ridge. The 2m deep eastern ditch of the barrow was excavated once in the 1980s by Julian Richards and his team for the Stonehenge Environs Project, although they failed to find any dateable material. The Stonehenge Riverside Project excavated the ditch once more in 2008. As long ago as 1979, the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments recommended that the barrow should be better protected, by diverting the bridleway around