Four contiguous but distinct landscape zones are discussed, using fieldwork results, air survey, documentary and topographical data. The use of these different landscapes by early communities is compared and contrasted. Apart from the difference in date between the pre-Flandrian, clay, silt and peat surfaces, another chronological variation existed: the division of the clay fens into northern and southern zones. The southern clay formed and matured up to 500 years earlier, and the interaction between settlement and land use can be clearly traced in the changing balance of occupation between the north and south clay fens.