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Near the conclusion of the Third Report, which summarized the work on 710 specimens, the authors stated that it was ‘likely to be the last major report of the South-Western Sub-Committee’, and so it seemed at the time. During the 10 years that have elapsed since then, another 490 specimens have been examined, from the following counties and museums or collections:This report therefore extends the list of specimens examined by this Committee from 710 to 1200, and it is believed that this really is the last major report of this body.

The area covered by this survey, which epitomizes the writer's work on Wessex barrows since 1929, is limited on the west by a line drawn from Weston-super-Mare to Bridport, on the east by a line drawn from Dorking to Arundel, on the north roughly by the northern limit of the chalk downs south of the Thames, and on the south by the sea. It encloses the great majority of bell, disc, and saucer barrows, all of which appear to be expressions of Piggott's Wessex Bronze Age culture. It should be noted however that elements of this culture are found outside the area dealt with, notably at various places to the north-east. Nearly all of these are so close to the Icknield Way as to make it certain that this was the means of communication linking the one with the other. Another, though less important, extension of the Wessex Bronze Age culture is represented by a few sites, some of them doubtful, within a short distance of the course of the Upper Thames, and it is probable that the river was the means of communication used.Here it is well to point out the respects in which the boundaries of Bronze Age Wessex, as determined by my own distribution-maps of barrows, differ from those adopted in the O.S. Map of Neolithic Wessex, and by Mr Stuart Piggott in his recent paper, ‘The Early Bronze Age in Wessex.’

An attempt is made to classify and list in detail the known disc-barrows in and around Wessex-about ijo in all, 155 being of normal type, 13 of 'Dorset' type, and two of exceptional character. Of these, g3 are in Wiltshire, 57 being within ten km of Stonehenge, and 36 within five km of that monument, which evidently acted as a magnet in attracting major barrow cemeteries to its vicinity.The normal disc-barrow is of the 'Wessex culture' of the Early Bronze Age. The rite is nearly always cremation, but a very few possible instances of primary inhumation need further investigation. The gravegoods are usually necklaces of beads (amber, shale, faience, in four instances all together), in three instances with amber space-plates; bronze awls {pointed at one end and flat at the other which probably went into a handle); and small two-edged bronze knives. Occasionally the cremation is in an urn or with an 'Aldbourne' or other cup. The frequency of beads, and the absence of warrior equipment such as 'Wessex' bronze daggers, has until now led to the conclusion that they were the places of interment of females.Since 1953 seven disc-barrows have been scientifically excavated but final reports are still awaited. The primary cremation from one of the mounds of the oval twin barrow Milton Lilbourne 1 was probably female. The primary cremation from the central mound of Collingbourne Kingston 18 could not be sexed; but two cremations from a large pit beneath the eccentric mound of the same barrow were identified as probably and possibly adult male. Cremations from the other sites could not be sexed. These meagre results suggest that the central or other primary mounds of disc-barrows were for females but the eccentric mounds may have been for either sex. The sexing of more cremations is urgently needed.

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