'This is a scholarly tour de force, informed by a lifetime of original research and critical reading. The notion of a traditional Highland agrarian system surviving unchanged from the Iron Age until the eighteenth century is simply blown out of the water' Chris Smout, Institute for Environmental History, University of St Andrews A survey of how Highland society organised its farming from prehistory to 1914 It has long been assumed that the farming communities present in the Highlands prior to the Clearances were old established. For some, the way they farmed the land and the technologies which they employed took shape during prehistory and then survived unchanged. This study confronts this debate over whether what we see prior to the Clearances was the outcome of a longstanding continuity or whether we should allow for greater ongoing change. It does so by exploring the nature of the farming community and its strategies of resource use, and how these impacted on landscape and the environment. It starts with a review of farming in prehistory and carries its main themes forward through the medieval and early modern periods, rounding off the discussion with a review of the Clearances and the emergence of crofting townships over the 18th and 19th centuries, highlighting the moments of discontinuity in the making of the Highland cultural landscape. Robert A. Dodgshon is Emeritus Professor of Human Geography, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University. His previous books include Land and Society in Early Scotland (1981), From Chiefs to Landlords: Social and Economic Change in the Western Highlands and Islands, c.1493-1820 (1998) and The Age of the Clans (2002).