GLASGOW, Scotland – Drumadoon on the Isle of Arran has been in the UK news this week, heralded as perhaps the only complete Neolithic cursus to be found in the British Isles to date. A cursus – a Neolithic structure that can take the form of a ditch or a trench, such as that at Stonehenge – attained the name from historian William Stukeley in the 1700s. It comes from the Latin word for ‘course,’ since it was thought that they may have been Roman athletic grounds, but they are usually rectangular. Built between 4000 and 3000 BCE, they may have been used as gathering places, near sacred sites. They are the largest and earliest monuments to be found in the UK. Some are enormous, such as the cursus in Dorset which crosses Cranbourne Chase and which takes in several valleys and a river.
The latest cursus was discovered on Arran in 2021 and excavation began in August of this year. The structure is around 1.1 km in length and, as above, is not far from a sacred site: the stone circle of Machrie Moor. Professor of archaeological science at Glasgow University Nicki Whitehouse says that the site is unusual, consisting of a combination of agriculture and ceremonial, adding that“…the whole Drumadoon landscape probably forms part of something much more extensive.”
Cursus specialist Kenny Brophy, who lectures in archaeology at Glasgow University, told the press that the cursus is “…strategically located to take people from the coast up to the interior of the island and to showcase Machrie Moor.”
He also says that it was built with a ‘crazy amount’ of labour: it’s taking time to excavate with modern methods and its original construction must have required heroic efforts – given Neolithic tools, it is likely to have taken decades. Brophy thinks that the cursus was built by a local group, perhaps with assistance from people coming over to Arran on pilgrimage (he also speaks of a ‘phenomenal social glue’).
The director of Archaeology Scotland, Gavin MacGregor, told the Guardian that
“Having that number of people looking and thinking about the monument for the first time in potentially several thousand years created a real energy. There’s a phrase about ‘the theatre of excavation’ and bringing people together to congregate on the hillside, working through questions together, in a strange way has an affinity to those people making the sense of the world when the cursus was first constructed.”
The site itself was discovered by Dave Cowley, Rapid Archaeological Mapping Programme Manager at Historic Environment Scotland, using LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging technology). In the past, many such monuments have been identified by means of aerial photography. Cowley holds the view that there were probably quite a number of cursuses, but because they would have been marked by wood, they will not have survived (wooden structures can last a long time, but it depends on the wood that was used as well as the surrounding soil and other conditions). He adds:
“When you look at the topography, it very slightly runs to the crest of a ridge. They have been very careful how they have positioned this monument. There probably was a superstructure here but we won’t know for sure without excavation. It would have had impact. There is an element of design to it, a form of landscape architecture. It does seem likely that there were timber elements built into it. Whether or not it was set on fire we just don’t know at the moment.”
Isle of Arran [Photo Credit: Scotia CCA 3.0]
The excavation is now ongoing, and it remains to be seen what secrets the site has yet to reveal. As mentioned above, the monument is close to the standing stones – a complex of six stone circles consisting of granite boulders and sandstone pillars – at Machrie Moor, which is in turn part of a much bigger Neolithic site, including hut circles, burial cairns and a field system. Prior to the stones, wooden posts were placed in the same configuration: this has been a sacred site for many generations of Neolithic folk. The circles are positioned so that a notch on the horizon is visible: the sun at the summer Solstice shines through this, which may account for the location of the stones.
Numerous chambered tombs are also found on the island and these have been explored since the 1800s, such as the ‘Giant’s Graves’ site at Largymore, said in Irish legend to be the final resting place of the mythical warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill and his warband, the Fianna. The island also has legends about another famous man, the 14th C Robert the Bruce: in the writings of Walter Scott, a cave on Arran was where the king encountered the spider. But the cave contains older mysteries; Iron Age carvings and examples of Ogham script. Images of deer, horses, snakes, and a male figure can be found here.
We asked UK Pagans for their views on the latest Arran excavation;
“The main thing for me with these kinds of sites is the significance of landscape scale. Instead of speculating what it was used for, what is clear is that a monumental landscape is worked with over many, many years, possibly generations. For instance, the community at this site would have built these features one by one, deliberately in the places they did after much contemplation and viewing of the land before anything happened to it. Perhaps over years of watching the moon and sun phases over the mountains. First then a stone or two, then the cursus perhaps, then maybe a circle and some burials, all in a long-term sequence that enhances a real sense of landscape significance. It’s not about the humans.
It’s not about corralling the animals as an asset (as many archaeologists have tried to assume, when looking at these places with modern capitalist westernised eyes). It’s about something possibly so ephemeral to us that we barely dare speak its name: sacred animism. Landscape speaks to them, and because of that they then create these features, in order to then make meaning to their lives. At the time, they would have been huge, probably stone-lined, and definitely not curved and grass-covered. They would have looked impressive. The human mind knows that this sight would have brought a significant shift in consciousness, or at least readying for such a shift to occur. Even if it was to step into funerary ritual, or food and celebration, perhaps all of that. Perhaps none too. Perhaps just playing as a kid on the cursus and between the stones. Nowhere would have been off limits as our sacred places are now.
The land, the sea, the sky. Cursus building fits humans in between. (A precursor to the world tree’s trunk, perhaps?) I’m speculating! (Harriet Sams; Druid, archaeologist and PhD researcher in Archaeotherapy.)
“I heartily recommend the writings of John Grigsby, author of Warriors of The Wasteland for an archeological perspective that is rooted in an animistic reverence for the spirituality of the Neolithic period.” (Teila Verch Dywenys, Druid)
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