The book presents research on past vegetation, landscape and land-use in a rural district in western Scania, southern Sweden. The investigations were part of the West Coast Line Project, a large-scale archaeological project in connection with the expansion of the West Coast railway line. Thanks to careful surveying and a well-thought strategy - both of wetlands and of archaeological features during the excavations - it has been possible to shed light on a number of interesting problems concerning the relationship between humans and their environment. Topics discussed are for instance forest composition, Mesolithic plant use, shore-line displacement, the introduction of cultivation, agricultural systems during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, and Bronze Age cosmology and society.