Transhumant pastoralism in historic landscapes: Beginning a European perspective

Pastoralism offers a vast field of study, and within it transhumant practices represent an important range of past and contemporary human mobility strategies. In its widest sense, transhumance may simply be described as the seasonal movement of livestock. The Oxford English Dictionary adds some environmental qualification to this by defining transhumance as “the action or practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle, typically to lowlands in winter and highlands in summer”. The wide-ranging geographic and social implications of such a definition mean, of course, that the study of transhumant practices permits a very wide perspective on human society, touching on themes as diverse as livestock management, economic responsiveness, social mobility and competition for land. Furthermore, use of the relative words ‘lowlands’ and ‘highlands’ means that a considerable proportion of the earth’s surface may be considered as potential settings for transhumance. There are consequently many ways in which people might conceive of and define the practice, and there has not been one, but many transhumant pastoralisms in Europe during historical times.