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During the third millennium BC, new types of anthropogenic landscape emerged across northern Europe: heathlands and pasture. These open landscapes afforded mobile pastoralism and the arena for a new funerary practice: barrow building. Here, the authors define this entanglement of people, animals and landscapes as a literal and figurative 'ancestral commons'. Focusing on western Jutland, they combine palaeoecological and archaeological evidence to characterise the form and temporal depth of the co-emergent links between pastoralism, barrows and mobility. Conceptualising the ancestral commons as a deep-time entanglement, characterised by rhythms of physical and metaphorical movement, reveals a landscape that afforded shared understanding of the ancestral past and a foundation for the subsequent Nordic Bronze Age. Keywords: Denmark, Neolithic, Bronze Age, landscape, palaeoecology, transhumance, emergence, affordance, Introduction During the third millennium BC, the landscapes of northern Europe were radically transformed by human-induced deforestation and the emergence of heathlands and other extensive areas of pasture. In some [...]

The megalithic pillar sites found around Lake Turkana, Kenya, are monumental cemeteries built approximately 5000 years ago. Their construction coincides with the spread of pastoralism into the region during a period of profound climate change. Early work at the Jarigole pillar site suggested that these places were secondary burial grounds. Subsequent excavations at other pillar sites, however, have revealed planned mortuary cavities for predominantly primary burials, challenging the idea that all pillar sites belonged to a single 'Jarigole mortuary tradition'. Here, the authors report new findings from the Jarigole site that resolve long-standing questions about eastern Africa's earliest monuments and provide insight into the social lives, and deaths, of the region's first pastoralists. Keywords: Eastern Africa, megalithic architecture, funerary archaeology, mortuary practices, pastoralist society, Introduction The earliest evidence of monumentality in eastern Africa coincides with the initial spread of food production into sub-Saharan Africa during a period of profound climatic, economic and social change [...]

The vast mortuary complexes of the Xiongnu, the world's first nomadic empire (c. 200 BC--AD 100), were important statements of elite power and ritual commemoration in Inner Asia. Very few of the features that accompanied the main tombs, however, have been fully excavated and investigated. This study is one of the first to assess completely the small archaeological features--and associated faunal remains--that surround the more monumental structures, features that intimate substantial investments in, and ritual activities around, these mortuary arenas. This research provides an important contribution to the understanding of the social politics of ritual practices and the development of complex institutions in steppe pastoral societies.Keywords: Inner Asia, Mongolia, Xiongnu, animal sacrifice, ritual, IntroductionDuring the first millennium BC, the Inner Asian steppe exhibited increasingly ostentatious mortuary monuments that displayed the power of nomadic elites and facilitated the interregional consolidation of the Xiongnu steppe [...]

The origins of agriculture in South-west Asia is a topic of continued archaeological debate. Of particular interest is how agricultural populations and practices spread inter-regionally. Was the Arabian Neolithic, for example, spread through the movement of pastoral groups, or did ideas perhaps develop independently? Here, the authors report on recent excavations at Alshabah, one of the first Neolithic sites discovered in Northern Arabia. The site's material culture, environmental context and chronology provide evidence suggesting that well-adapted, seasonally mobile, pastoralist groups played a key role in the Neolithisation of the Arabian Peninsula.Keywords: Arabian Peninsula, Neolithic, Holocene Wet Phase, grindstone tools, lithic technology, IntroductionThe transition from hunting and gathering to food-producing economies in Arabia took the form of a shift to mobile pastoralism. Domestic livestock appears to have been introduced in the seventh [...]

The deeply engrained stereotype of opposing 'steppe' and 'sown' societies has strongly influenced interpretation of Bronze Age Central Asia. This has led to the idea that the agricultural Oxus civilisation and non-Oxus mobile pastoralists formed two distinct cultural-economic groups in this region that are easily distinguishable through archaeological remains. Recent excavations of campsites in southern Turkmenistan, however, provide new evidence of variability in exchange between sites, suggesting adaptation by pastoralist groups in their interactions with settled Oxus farming groups. Rather than wholly reiterating or dissolving the distinctions between them, such practices dynamically reshaped the boundaries of these social and economic groups. These findings challenge us to move away from notions of centre-periphery, dependency and diffusion in discussions of intercultural contact in Eurasian prehistory. Keywords: Central Asia, Bronze Age, Murghab alluvial fan, mobile pastoralism, nomadic-sedentary interaction, Introduction Polarisation of 'the steppe' and 'the sown' is prominent in Eurasian scholarship, and fits intellectually alongside other dualistic categories that have deep roots in Western social science, such as [...]

The discovery of the Iceman in 1991 led to considerable speculation about the reason for his presence at such a remote location in the high Alps. One theory suggested that he was engaged in transhumant pastoralism when he met his death. Recent archaeological and palynological studies, however, have found no evidence of pastoral activities in this region during the Chalcolithic period. Regular exploitation of this upland landscape appears to have begun no earlier than the Middle Bronze Age. The theory that the Iceman was a high-altitude herdsman therefore appears to be untenable. Keywords: Bronze Age, Alpine archaeology, the Iceman ('Otzi'), transhumance, pollen analyses, Introduction Following his discovery in 1991, the most widely accepted explanation for the presence of the Iceman in such a high-altitude mountain setting as the upper Otz Valley is that [...]

The African origins of Egyptian civilisation lie in an important cultural horizon, the 'primary pastoral community', which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese parts of the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BC. A re-examination of the chronology, assisted by new AMS determinations from Neolithic sites in Middle Egypt, has charted the detailed development of these new kinds of society. The resulting picture challenges recent studies that emphasise climate change and environmental stress as drivers of cultural adaptation in north-east Africa. It also emphasises the crucial role of funerary practices and body decoration. Keywords: Egypt, Sahara, pastoralism, primary pastoral community, Badarian, climate change, 'Systematic mapping of empirical networks and interconnections, without prejudging the demarcation of units, could well lead to substantial discoveries of traditional as well as contemporary systems, and a re-drawing of [...]

The land question in many African countries has geographical, political, economic, social and demographic nuances. These factors colour land and resource rights for pastoral and forest-dwelling communities. Land tenure--the nature [...]

The existence of social hierarchy and stratification in prehistoric pastoral nomadism in southwestern Iran is probed through an analysis of archaeological and historical evidence. Vertical mobile pastoralism in the said region developed independently from settled farmers. The events in highland Iran that resulted in the attributes of Elamite civilization are also described.

Pastoral societies in Southwest Asia, West Africa and East Africa are examined with regard to the intergenerational transmission of wealth inequality. Findings on the relationship between parent and offspring wealth are discussed.

This study aims to explain a farmer-herder conflict in the inland Niger delta of Mali. We focus on the interests and motivations of the actors involved in the conflict and the rent seeking of the local administration in handling the conflict. Since independence, the customary pastoral leaders (the jowros) have gradually lost power and wealth to the benefit of previously underprivileged farmers (the rimaybe). We argue that this process is mainly the result of national policies and laws giving priority to agricultural development at the expense of pastoralism. The result has been large-scale conversions of dry season pastures to rice fields. This pastoral marginalisation also results in increased land use conflicts between herders and farmers. In addition, rent seeking by local officials is perpetuating land use conflicts in the area. Hence, officials are benefiting from conflicts, while especially pastoralists, but also farmers, are losing out. The droughts of the 1970s and 1980s, leading to a more rapid encroachment of rice fields on pastures, as well as the power vacuum that emerged in the early days of the decentralisation process, further aggravated land disputes. Finally, we use this case study to call for an inclusion of issues of rent seeking and corruption more centrally in political ecology. KEY WORDS: Mali, farmer-herder conflicts, political ecology, rent seeking, corruption

Abstract Nomadic pastoral systems in Inner Asia are facing sweeping changes. Designing new development models for the sustainable utilization of rangelands requires a better understanding of nomadic pastoral systems. Owen [...]

Abstract Otor is a traditional mobility strategy developed by Mongolian herders to cope with their highly variable and uncertain environment. The Livestock and Rangeland Double-Contract Responsibility System (LRDCRS) implemented in [...]

Nearly ten years ago, a book entitled 'The End of Nomadism?' raised attention to the uncertain future of mobile pastoralism among mainly Mongolian-speaking peoples in China, Mongolia and Russia (Humphrey [...]

The Soqotra Archipelago is Yemen's ultimate frontier, straddling the African Continent and the Arabian Peninsula. Its approximately 50,000 inhabitants occupy a hyphenated geographical place as well as an interstitial cultural space. Soqotra, the main island of the Archipelago, is a community of once predominantly non-nomadic transhumant pastoralists, who are now engaged in increasingly non-pastoralist livelihoods, with a unique language and a mixed ethnic composition undergoing an accelerated change process driven by a dual incorporation process: on the one hand, the Yemeni government's modernization of its infrastructure and consolidation of its political incorporation into the national community; and, on the other, a United Nations led internationalization of its economy through the implementation of an environmental protection and ecotourism development program. This paper situates these recent initiatives, as the latest phase, within a historical process of change by retracing the genealogy of Soqotra's engagement with a modernization process. It suggests that this process was primarily driven by a series of acts of political incorporation by mainland actors. These acts are seen as the crucible of the island's history, as they set in motion the mechanism of change through the reconfiguration of its local institutions resulting in the transformation of its internal social structure as well as of the associated cultural practices. Accordingly, the paper, first, offers a historical periodization of the island's transformation process through a description of the four administrative regimes introduced under the different phases of political incorporation. Second, it describes the internal adjustments engendered by each of these administrative regimes in terms of polity formation, economic strategy, and their sociocultural ramifications. Third, it concludes with the emerging dysfunctional aspects of this change process and recommends the prioritization of cultural diversity as a potential solution. Key words: Soqotra, Yemen, political incorporation, pastoralism, modernization

Sun, Xiaogang, Naoki Naito (eds.) (2007) 'Mobility, Flexibility and Potential of Nomadic Pastoralism in Eurasia and Africa.' Kyoto, Japan: Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies (ASAFAS), Special Paper [...]