Wood and fire: Scotland’s timber cursus monuments

This paper offers the first comprehensive overview of Scotland’s early Neolithic timber cursus monuments. This small group of sites has, in recent years, been viewed as a significant element of the early Neolithic repertoire in northern Britain, and forerunner to the later earthwork cursus monuments found across the British Isles; but as yet their treatment has been at a largely superficial level. The article draws together the evidence from excavations, cropmarks and the authors’ own fieldwork. As well as describing the monuments, the study also offers a new interpretation of the construction, role and destruction of these monuments within the context of the woodland world of lowland Scotland in the first half of the fourth millennium BC