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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Of all the early prehistoric monuments of Britain the Dorset Cursus is both the largest and at the same time one of the least known. Its claim to pre-eminence in terms of mere size is sufficiently established by the facts that it is six miles in length, contains an area of two hundred and twenty acres, and in its original state comprised a volume of earthwork amounting to some six-and-a-half million cubic feet. The significance of these figures may better be appreciated by a comparison with Avebury, which had originally an earthwork volume of about three-and-a-half million cubic feet, or with the Stonehenge Cursus, which is a little less than one-and-three-quarter miles in length, and encloses only seventy acres.
1 I am indebted to Lieut.-Colonel R. H. Cunnington for drawing my attention to this reference.
2 Colt Hoare, Ancient Wiltshire, II (1819), 33.
3 Charles Warne, Ancient Dorset (1872), 26–8.
4 Heywood Sumner, Ancient Earthworks of Cranborne Chase (1913), 73–4.
5 Sumner, op. cit., 50.
6 Crawford and Keiller, Wessex from the Air (1929), 113 and pl. XVI.
7 Ant. Journ., XV (1935), 78.
8 Dr Crawford tells me that his suggestion referred to a possible extension sw. from Gussage Down, to and beyond Thickthorn Down, and was based on air-photographs (lost in the war) and suggestive alignments of field-boundaries, but not on actual field-work. The actual course of this missing section of the Cursus differs slightly from that suggested.
9 Arch. Journ., CIV (1948), 10–11.
10 In particular a very fine sortie taken by the R.A.F. in 1943 (no. HLA/651), at a scale of approximately 1 : 15,000, kindly lent by Mr Brian Hope-Taylor, F.S.A.
11 Sumner, op. cit., 35–6, pl. XVI.
12 Sumner, op. cit., pl. XLIV.
13 The safeguarding of the barrow from the deleterious effects of afforestation is due to the prompt action of Dr J. F. S. Stone.
14 Immediately NW. of the word ‘Long’ in ‘Long Barrows’ in FIG. I.
15 Crawford and Keiller, Wessexfrom the Air (1928), 232.
16 A detailed description and discussion of all known cursuses, long mortuary enclosures and allied structures will appear in the second volume of Excavations at Dorchester, Oxon.
17 A possible though unproven instance has been recorded by Dr J. K. St. Joseph at Maxey, Northamptonshire, but the area of junction, if such there was, has been destroyed by graveldigging.
18 The belief in the efficacy of a blow from one of the participants as a cure for barrenness in women points to an origin in a fertility ritual.
