for arable cultivation and for pasture. There are flat open pastures, areas of intensive arable production and more varied undulating, enclosed landscapes which creates diversity within the vale as a whole. Woodland is sparse but there is more in the east towards West Ayton and Wykeham. The coastal belt has a rather different landscape. The land to the east was not part of glacial Lake Pickering and glacial deposits have created a more hilly undulating landscape. In all areas agricultural development has resulted in a loss of natural habitats except for small relics of former areas which are now being monitored and conserved. History and settlement The earliest known evidence of human presence in the area dates back to the Mesolithic period. The most important remaining settlement of this period is that at Star Carr, where archaeologists have found evidence of a permanent house 10,500 years ago on the shore of what was then a shallow lake, as well as "a wooden platform extending 18–20 feet over the surface of the lake itself near Scarborough, where, due to waterlogged conditions, a considerable quantity of organic remains as well as flint tools, have survived. This is Britain’s best-known Mesolithic site. The site, on the eastern shores of glacial Lake Pickering, was surrounded by birch trees, some of which had been cleared and used to construct a rough platform of branches and brushwood. Lumps of turf and stones had been thrown on top of this construction to make a village site. The site was probably visited from time to time by about four or five families who were engaged in hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants as well as manufacturing tools and weapons and working skins for clothes. On the southern edge of the vale lies West Heslerton, where recent excavation has revealed continuous habitation since the Late Mesolithic Age, about 5000 BC. This site has revealed a great deal of dwelling and occupation evidence from the Neolithic period to the present day. The development of farming during the succeeding Neolithic period is evident in the distribution of earth long barrows throughout the area. Bronze and Iron Age remains have been found on the fringe of the vale. There are sections of Roman roads and Roman villas, which indicate economic activity in the vale at the time. In 2011 excavations close to the present village of Sherburn on the southeastern edge of