Historical Archaeologies of Transhumance across Europe

Eugene Costello, Eva Svensson, Eugene Costello, Eva Svensson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815380320
• eBook ISBN: 9781351213370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Transhumance is a form of pastoralism that has been practised around the world since animals were first domesticated. Such seasonal movements have formed an important aspect of many European farming systems for several thousand years, although they have declined markedly since the nineteenth century. Ethnographers and geographers have long been involved in recording transhumant practices, and in the last two decades archaeologists have started to add a new material dimension to the subject.

This volume brings together recent advances in the study of European transhumance during historical times, from Sweden to Spain, Romania to Ireland, and beyond that even Newfoundland. While the focus is on the archaeology of seasonal sites used by shepherds and cowherds, the contributions exhibit a high degree of interdisciplinarity. Documentary, cartographic, ethnographic and palaeoecological evidence all play a part in the examination of seasonal movement and settlement in medieval and post-medieval landscapes. Notwithstanding the obvious diversity across Europe in terms of livestock, distances travelled and socio-economic context, an extended introduction to the volume shows that cross-cutting themes are now emerging, including mobility, gendered herding, collective land-use, the agency of non-elite people and competition for grazing and markets.

The book will appeal not only to archaeologists, but to historians, geographers, ethnographers, palaeoecologists and anyone interested in rural lifeways across Europe.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• Chapter 1 Transhumant pastoralism in historic landscapes: beginning a European perspective
• Chapter 2 The Scandinavian shieling – between innovation and tradition
• Chapter 3 From written sources to archaeological remains – medieval shielingsin central Scandinavia
• Chapter 4 Winter housing: archaeological perspectives on Newfoundland’snon-pastoral transhumant tradition
• Chapter 5 What do we really know about transhumance in medieval Scotland?
• Chapter 6 Ethno-geoarchaeological study of seasonal occupation: Bhiliscleitir,the Isle of Lewis
• Chapter 7 Morphology of transhumant settlements in post-medieval South Connemara:a case study in adaptation
• Chapter 8 The changing character of transhumance in early and later medieval England
• Chapter 9 Seasonal pastoral settlement in the lower mountains of the Auvergneregion (France) during the medieval and modern periods(thirteenth–eighteenth centuries)
• Chapter 10 Moving up and down throughout the seasons: winter and summer grazingbetween Provence and the southern Alps (France) ad 1100–1500
• Chapter 11 Alpine settlement remains in the Bernese Alps (Switzerland) in medievaland modern times: the visibility of alpine summer farming activities in the archaeological record
• Chapter 12 Short- and long-distance transhumant systems and the commons inpost-classical archaeology: case studies from southern Europe
• Chapter 13 Transhumance in the mountains of northern Tuscany (Italy)
• Chapter 14 The role of marginal landscapes in understanding transhumance in southernTuscany (twelfth–twentieth centuries AD): a reverse perspective integrating ethnoarchaeological and historical approaches
• Chapter 15 Transhumant herding systems in Iberia
• Chapter 16 Transhumance dynamics in the Gredos Range (central Spain) during thelast two millennia: environmental and socio-political vectors of change
• Chapter 17 Ovine pastoralism and mobility systems in Romania:an ethnoarchaeological approach
• Index