Based on the author's thesis, this study presents a series of period-based reconstructions of the occupation and exploitation of the Wolds in East Yorkshire from the late Bronze Age to the early medieval period. Tracing the transformation and re-orientation of the landscape during this long time-frame, Fenton-Thomas reveals a cyclical pattern of change primarily concerned with an increase in land division and an expansion of settlement from the Wold edge to the interior alongside or due to shifts in land-use practices and social change.

This long-term study of landscape change on the Yorkshire Wolds uses archaeological and historical sources to look at land division, territorial organisation and settlement patterns from the late prehistoric period to the middle ages