Integrating the techniques of archaeology, history and geography, this book traces the history of human settlement in the Biferno Valley from early prehistory to the present century. It also covers the parallel story of landscape development, showing that the two have to be understood together. It argues for the importance of human settlement, rather than climate (as is often argued) in shaping the Mediterranean landscape. This book provides an interdisciplinary study of a restricted region, but about an important theme: the relationship between people and landscape in the past, and what we can learn from it for the future. A second volume containing the specialist supporting data collected by the archaeological project is also available, entitled The Biferno Valley: An Archaeological History of a Mediterranean Landscape - the Archaeological and Geomorphical Record. This volume, edited by Graeme Barker, is published in the Leicester Archaeology Monograph series and is available from the School of Archaeological Studies, University of Leicester.