The Dorset Cursus forum 3 room
Image by texlahoma
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Have a look at
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=dorset+cursus&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=18.913312,39.067383&ie=UTF8&ll=50.937087,-1.992742&spn=0.001227,0.002384&t=h&z=19

You'll have to copy all that clobber and paste it in your browser. These are google maps photos taken this summer (so the copyright says) and you can see two excavations taking place on Down Farm. The farmer, Martin Green, far from being the bad sort who got cussed on a nearby forum topic for ploughing the cursus, has done a lot of work to discover the landscape. I heartly recommend his book "A Landcsape Revealed: 10,000 years on a chalkland farm".

Anybody in touch with him or know what's going on down there? It looks like a henge structure and circle of pits / massive postholes. Just how many henges did these people need in one small area??!

I'm hoping to get an excursion to the Cursus in the next month or so.

You're actually looking at an old excavation. These are the Wyke Down henges, as featured in Martin Green's 'A Landscape Revealed...' (pages 85-90) and in more detail in Charles French et al (2007) 'Prehistoric Landscape Development and Human Impact in the upper Allen valley, Cranborne Chase, Dorset' (MacDonald Insititute Monographs, Cambridge). The latter features the full excavation reports of these and several other sites on the Chase. It'll cost you though...

Anyone else noticed that the 'most recent' Google Earth imagery isn't necessarily that recent?