The excavations to be described were carried out in the autumn and winter of 1941–42, and a total of fifteen barrows was examined. Of these, ten were on Beaulieu Heath, to the south of the Brockenhurst–Hatchet Gate road, and the remaining five near Stoney Cross to the north-west of the New Forest. All the barrows were about to be destroyed in the course of building operations, and it was due to the urgency of the situation that none of the barrows could be more fully excavated. The time of year, and, in the case of Beaulieu Heath, the lowness of the site, made the undertaking in wet weather at least, an extremely difficult one. It is therefore with full knowledge of its incompleteness that I must present this report.

Six men were employed at both sites, with Mr Rogers as foreman. I would like to express my gratitude to him for his very willing co-operation. Other helpers included Messrs Richard Atkinson, Philip Suggett, L. V. Grinsell and Aubrey Parke, Miss Jocelyn Morris and Miss B. de Cardi, and Mr and Mrs Maxwell-Hyslop. I am most grateful to all of them, and more especially to Miss Jocelyn Morris and Mr Atkinson, to whose skill and patience is largely due the recovery of rhe remains of the mortuary-house in Barrow II. Mr B. H. St. J. O'Neil visited both sites several times. Thanks are also due to Dr F. E. Zeuner for his remarks on the soil specimens, to my husband for a note on the Barrow II mortuary-house and to Sir Cyril Fox for his pottery report.

The Isle of Thanet, no doubt on account of its proximity to the Continent, has during the flow of the centuries experienced its full share of the tide of human immigration and invasion. The Birchington district in particular appears to have been singled out for settlement in ancient times. Flints ranging in age from Palaeolithic to Neolithic have been recovered from various localities, whilst out on the Flats directly facing Minnis Headland, pottery of Roman, Jutish and Saxon character has been found. The most recent addition to the sequence is the considerable occupation area of Late Bronze Age date found by the late ‘Jimmy’ Beck opposite the Minnis Bay esplanade slipway some 210 yards from dry land. The exact position of the site is marked by a black dot on fig. 1. During the Late Bronze Age, no doubt, the present Minnis Bay Flats, scene of the excavations described in this paper, formed the floor of a seaward extension of the valley flanked on the one hand by the Minnis Headland and on the other by the Rifle Range land, both of which must have stretched considerably further out in the Thames Estuary than they do to-day. The fact that the site could only be excavated between tides, being covered by several feet at high water, imposed a severe limitation on the excavations described in this paper.