Pastoralism and Mobile Herding in Ancient Greece: Problems of Inconsistent Terminology and Ambiguous Proxies

Scholars see specialised pastoralism in Greece as beginning at various dates between the Neolithic (seventh–fourth millennia BCE) and early modern period (sixteenth–seventeenth centuries CE), reflecting both inconsistency in the meanings attached to the term ‘pastoralism’ and ambiguity in how its diverse forms might be recognised archaeologically. Here we do not offer a timeline for the development of pastoralism in Greece, but evaluate its potential for archaeological investigation. For heuristic purposes, we highlight the varied scales and forms of herding practised recently in Greece, from a handful of animals kept near home, through herds taken to seasonal pastures by mixed agro-pastoral farmers, to the huge flocks accompanying specialised Sarakatsani and Vlach pastoralists on seasonal vertical migrations. Arguments for ancient mobile pastoralism include appeals to ecological necessity/opportunity, scarce/flimsy settlement traces, widely distributed material culture styles, zooarchaeological evidence for animal husbandry, and palaeoecological traces of the impact of livestock on the landscape. These arguments are compatible with animal management on a restricted scale by mixed agro-pastoral farmers and thus with a late emergence of mobile specialised pastoralists, but the latter may be underrepresented in the extant archaeological record, not least because of hitherto limited exploration in mountainous areas. Recent more intensive archaeological and palaeoecological prospection is achieving much improved documentation of human activity in mountainous areas, while macroscopic and stable-isotopic analysis of animal bones/teeth may shed light on related husbandry practices including seasonal mobility. These methods alone will not distinguish seasonal transhumance by mixed agro-pastoral farmers from specialised dependence on large-scale pastoralism, as practised by the Sarakatsani and Vlachs. The latter groups maintained distinct cultural identities that were integrally bound up with their highly mobile pastoral way of life. Archaeological identification of such specialised pastoralists may thus require investigation of material-cultural or palaeogenetic (livestock breed) evidence for maintenance of group boundaries.