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The role of animal movement in spreading infectious diseases is highly recognized by various legislations and institutions such as the World Organisation for Animal Health and the International Animal Health Code. The increased interactions at the nexus of human-animal-ecosystem interface have seen an unprecedented introduction and reintroduction of new zoonotic diseases with high socio-economic impacts such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonotic disease that affects both humans and animals and is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes or through contact with the body fluids of infected animals. This study seeks to characterize movement patterns of pastoralist and how this movement behaviour increases their susceptibility to RVF virus exposure. We levarage on a rapidly growing field of movement ecology to monitor five herds collared from 2013 – 2015 in an RVF endemic semi-arid region in Kenya. The herds were also sampled for RVF antibodies to assess their exposure to RVF virus during the rainy seasons. adehabitatLT package in R was used to analyze the trajectory data whereas the first passage time (FPT) analysis was used to measure the area utilized in grazing. Sedentary herds grazed within 15km radius while migrating herds presented restricted space use patterns during the dry seasons and transient movement during the start and end of the rainy season. Furthermore, RVF virus antibodies were generally low for sedentary herds whereas the migrating herds recorded high levels during their transition periods. This study can be used to identify RVF risk zones for timely and targeted management strategies.

Mikhail Petrovich Gryaznov is one of the scientists whose range of scientific interests has never been limited to one topic. His work in the early 1930s as part of the History of nomadic pastoralism group to a large extent determined the direction of his activities in the future. It is important that by the beginning of the 1930s M.P. Gryaznov accumulated significant and diverse experience in field and office research, which allowed him to outline a solution to the problem of the emergence and development of nomadic pastoralism based on a synthesis of archaeological and written sources and to propose one of the first programs in Soviet archaeology to study the history of early nomads. This article is devoted to the contribution of M.P. Gryaznov in the study of the problem of the emergence and development of nomadic pastoralism. The work also used information from unpublished or poorly studied sources., Михаил Петрович Грязнов относится к числу ученых, круг научных интересов которых никогда не ограничивался одной темой. Работа в начале 1930-х гг. в составе бригады ИКС (история кочевого скотоводства) в значительной степени определила направление его деятельности в дальнейшем. Немаловажно, что к началу 1930-х гг. М. П. Грязновым был накоплен значительный и разнообразный опыт в области полевых и камеральных исследований, что позволило ему наметить решение проблемы возникновения и развития кочевого скотоводства на основе синтеза археологических и письменных источников и предложить одну из первых в советской археологии программ по изучению истории ранних кочевников. Настоящая статья посвящена вкладу М. П. Грязнова в изучение проблемы возникновения и развития кочевого скотоводства. В работе были также использованы сведения из неопубликованных или малоизученных источников.

The file processed with OCR is smaller and allows cutting and pasting (though this may contain errors). The file without OCR is much larger and does not allow cutting and pasting but the visual quality is superior., Nomadic pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry characterised by movement. Herders and their animals move across the tundra and taiga displaying a curious dichotomous relationship of control by and response to each other. This field based research - carried out among Komi nomadic reindeer herders of the Russian far north - examines how Komi pastoral nomads choose a particular time, route and length of migration. This was explored by using anthropological as well as ecological methods to (i) identify how social and political change and environmental variability influence the reindeers’ and herders’ movements alike and (ii) examine how nomadic movements occur in relation to nonecological and ecological factors. It was found that there were essentially two types of human / animal movements; individual movements (made by the duty herder and his herd) and collective movements (made by the brigade). Both types of movement, in time and space, were fundamentally dependent upon herding skill and knowledge, and herd control: (a) the duty herder’s ability to maintain herd cohesion and (b) the general aim of preventing harm befalling the herd (by avoiding dangerous terrain). The duty herder’s selection of pastures was, therefore, made mainly according to where reindeer were the easiest to control. It was also found that individual movements could best be understood as emanating from the interplay between reindeer behaviour and the duty herder’s actions. This interplay is best described as being the duty herder’s skilful perception of and response to ethological changes, as advocated by Tim Ingold. Its main principle is based on the duty herder’s maintenance of herd cohesion, within a restricted territory, which has minimal impact upon reindeer behaviour, and which is achieved through skilful manoeuvring. Collective movements could best be described as a means of providing duty herders with the necessary space in which to manoeuvre their herds with the minimum recourse to herding techniques (such as grouping and re-grouping, stopping and turning the herd), and the avoidance of undesirable pasturing areas. Consequently, it is not by analysing the impact that individual factors have upon the nomadic collective (i.e., nomads and animals) as a whole, that nomadic pastoralist movement will be understood. A new model for analysing nomadic pastoralist movement - focusing on the interrelations between nomads and their animals and the impacts that individual factors have upon it - is proposed.

The presence of horses in archaeological sites across North America is often noted in research as an indicator of European contact. Fewer studies, however, have considered how Indigenous peoples incorporated horses as an intrinsic aspect of their lives. Research that considers Indigenous peoples’ relationships with horses typically focuses on Southern Plains groups and does not feature Northern Plains communities as a central aspect. Looking specifically at one Northern Great Plains Indigenous people, this paper analyzes how Blackfoot lifeways were altered as a result of the protohistoric (seventeenth to eighteenth century) reintroduction of the horse. Blackfoot lives were transformed as their relationship with the land evolved, economic systems reformed, and trade, religion, and war became centered around the horse. Almost all Blackfoot people would have felt the effects of the horse’s introduction, however not necessarily equally as these changes caused a shift in hierarchy. These impacts and changes on lifeways are evidenced by European historical accounts, Indigenous oral histories, and the archaeological record. Examining the relationship that the Blackfoot formed with horses demonstrates the significant influence that animals can have over people’s lives. Horses’ introduction to Blackfoot peoples proved to cause significant changes in the ways many conducted their lives, such as through the establishment of nomadic pastoralism and trade routes centered around the horse. This paper additionally calls for further research into the continued relationship between the Blackfoot peoples and the horse.

Kin relations have a strong theoretical and empirical basis for explaining cooperative behavior. Nevertheless, there is growing recognition that context—the cooperative environment of an individual—also shapes the willingness of individuals to cooperate. For nomadic pastoralists in Norway, cooperation among both kin and non-kin is an essential predictor for success. The northern parts of the country are characterized by a history of herder-herder competition exacerbating between-herder conflict, lack of trust, and subsequent coordination problems. In contrast, because of a history of herder-farmer competition, southern Norway is characterized by high levels of between-herder coordination and trust. This comparative study investigates the relative importance of “cooperative context” and kinship in structuring cooperative behavior using an experimental gift game. The main findings from this study were that in the South, a high level of cooperation around an individual pushes gifts to be distributed evenly among other herders. Nevertheless, kinship matters, since close kin give and receive larger gifts. In contrast, kinship seems to be the main factor affecting gift distribution in the North. Herders in the North are also concerned with distributing gifts equally, albeit limiting them to close kin: the level of intragroup cooperation drives gifts to be distributed evenly among other closely related herders. The observed regional contrasts in cooperative decisions fit with the different historical levels of conflict and trust in the two regions: whereas herders in the South are affected by both cooperative context and kinship, kinship seems to be the main determinant of cooperation in the North.

The Sami siida has been described as an organizational institution tailored to meet the dynamic demands of reindeer herding. Historically, it has been characterized as a relatively small group base...

There has been a great increase in archaeological research in Mongolia since 2000. Increasingly precise chronologies, regional studies, and the growth of development-driven archaeology are transforming our knowledge of this key region of northeastern Asia. This review summarizes recent work and provides a narrative of the prehistoric and medieval cultural sequences as presently understood. I focus on long-standing key topics: early human habitation, the adoption of food-producing economies, Bronze Age social transformations, and the emergence of central places and large polities. I argue that, on the one hand, Mongolia has unique data and new examples to offer the archaeological community and, on the other, that the prehistory of Mongolia and the steppe are not so different from the rest of the world in its history of research and key questions. This review provides general overviews covering the Upper Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic or Neolithic, and Bronze Age to the Xiongnu period; specific data related to each period provide jumping-off points for comparative analysis and further examination.

Nomadic pastoralism persists at a substantial scale in Tuva and neighboring regions of Inner Asia. Tuvan pastoral lifeways reflect adaptations to both local environments and current economic realities. Much of our quantitative understanding of the economics of Tuvan nomads is derived from data collected in the first half of the 20th century. Accordingly, this paper provides an updated picture of the inner workings of nomadic households using data collected in Barun-Khemchik and Bai-Taiga provinces in 2013–2015. It analyzes herd composition and size, and compares the frequency of different animals kept today with values recorded in Tuva in 1916 and 1931. It then quantifies rates of provisioning hay and grain, and the production of meat and dairy products for consumption and sale. Finally, it characterizes typical costs of food, petrol, medicine, clothing, and school supplies faced by present-day herders. We advocate the collection of quantitative ethnographic data that can shed further light on the future of the Tuvan pastoralist niche.

Questions surrounding the emergence of highly mobile nomadic pastoralism and the origins of the associated Scythian material culture have a long history in Eurasian steppe archaeology, but advances in knowledge have been hindered by a lack of data. Here we present new findings on the Early Iron Age royal burial mound Tunnug 1 in Tuva. While the site belongs to the same cultural tradition as Arzhan 1, the conceptual roots of the funerary ritual architecture can be traced to precursors in the Mongun Taiga culture and the Mongolian deer stone khirigsuur complex. The clay architecture uncovered at Tunnug 1 does not find any regional comparisons and possibly hints towards a western Central Asian contribution to the formation of the earliest Scythian horizon. Our research demonstrates the value of a multi-disciplinary approach to documenting monumental earthen architecture, including technical approaches (satellite imagery, aerial photographs, 3D models, digital elevation models, geophysics, and radiocarbon dating) with an analysis of construction material and associated finds.

This article explores the impacts of environmental crises on pastoral nomads in Ottoman Kurdistan/Armenia in the late nineteenth-century. It demonstrates that the climatic fluctuations characterizing these environmental crises were synchronized with global climatic oscillations, specifically the El Niño Southern Oscillation. Recurrent episodes of severe drought and cold dramatically affected these groups, who were unable to withstand extreme changes in temperature and precipitation. Back-to-back drought episodes created a shortage of water, dried up pastures and damaged forage, while severe cold resulted in high rates of premature death among herd animals. These climatic events thus had devastating economic and social consequences.

Objectives The Sahel belt is occupied by populations who use two types of subsistence strategy, nomadic pastoralism and sedentary farming, and who belong to three linguistic families, Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afro-Asiatic. Little is known, however, about the origins of these two populations and their mutual genetic relationships. Materials and methods We have built a large dataset of mitochondrial DNA sequences and Y chromosomal STR haplotypes of pastoralists and farmers belonging to all three linguistic phyla in the western, central, and eastern parts of the Sahel. We calculated pairwise genetic, geographic, and linguistic distances between populations and analyzed the effects of geography, language, and subsistence on population genetic structure. Results We found that subsistence mode significantly contributed to the generally low population structure in the Sahel and that language affiliation plays a more important role for pastoralists than for farmers. We also demonstrated that geographic isolation significantly influenced the population structure of sedentary farmers but not of nomadic pastoralists. Finally, we found haplotypes shared between the Fulani and Arabic-speaking Baggara, supporting the theory of Baggarization, which explains the recent adaptation of Arabic-speaking nomads in the Sahel region through contact with autochthonous sub-Saharan populations. Conclusions Based on various genetic and archaeological evidence pertaining to the Sahel, we suggest that the idea of a bidirectional Sahelian corridor is valid, but that pastoralists made a more important contribution to its population structure. It is also possible that agropastoralists diverged into farmers and pastoralists in the early stages of formation of the Sahelian gene pool.

Fading fast all over the world, nomadic people have faced biases concerning their lifestyles and their symbiosis with rangelands. The nomadic grazing, which is helpful to biodiversity, not detrimental, in rangeland commons is perceived and advocated by deep ecologists, conservation administrators and policy makers as a threat to conservation of ecosystems. Consequently, both nomadic pastoralists and rangeland ecosystems have suffered a grim fate. On the contrary, the subsistence pastoralism is an established sustainable strategy of livelihood and ecosystem conservation in the rangelands. Unfortunately, some of the most nutritive foods and other sustainable products of nomadic pastoralists have not desirably been priced in modern markets. With the demonstrated cases exhibiting the nomadic pastoralists, such as Hutsul shepherd communities of Ukraine, as most sustainable societies on planet Earth, there is urgent need for restructuring the popular paradigm and State policies on rangeland commons. In isolation of nomadic people, the rangelands cannot truly be conserved or protected. To begin with, the resilience of nomadic pastoralists to the changing environments and their (unique) rangeland management can first be pondered. Accordingly, the policy and legal frameworks of States need to be reoriented and revised. Досліджено, що кочове населення, яке швидко зникає в усьому світі, стикалося з упередженнями стосовно способу життя та симбіозу з пасовищами. Зазначено, що кочовий випас є корисним для біорізноманіття, але сприймається і відстоюється екологами, керівниками у сфері охорони довкілля та політиками як загроза збереженню екосистем. З іншого боку, натуральне скотарство є усталеною стійкою стратегією існування та збереження екосистем на пасовищах. Виявлено, що ціни на окремі найбільш поживні продукти харчування та іншу усталену продукцію кочових скотарів на сучасних ринках низькі. Наведено випадки позиціонування кочових скотарів, зокрема гуцульських вівчарських громад України, як найбільш стійких суспільств на планеті Земля і визначено нагальну потребу реструктуризації популярної парадигми та державної політики щодо пасовищ. Наголошено на неможливості збереження чи захисту пасовищ ізольовано від кочових скотарів. Обґрунтовано, що стійкість корінних скотарських спільнот до мінливого середовища – екологічного, економічного та політичного – має великий потенціал для захисту та збереження ландшафтів пасовищ або пейзажів прибережної зони. Акцентовано увагу на важливості міжнародних та національних основ політики для екології та економіки пасовищ, зміна парадигми та рамок якої сприятиме захисту пасовищ і скотарських громад. У цьому напрямі найбільш плідною визначено міжнародну правову базу, що може координувати національне законодавство і політику у сфері охорони та управління пасовищами. Починати доцільно зі стійкості кочових скотарів до мінливого середовища та їх унікального управління пасовищами, що потребує переорієнтації та перегляду політики і правових рамок держав.

Objectives This article explores the scale and seasonal patterns of mobility at the complex settlement site of Qizqala during the Middle Bronze Age (2400-1,500 BCE). By integrating human bone, teeth, and environmental samples this research tests the hypothesis of the persistent importance of community-wide seasonal pastoral transhumance during the early formation of complex settlement systems of the South Caucasus. Methods This research applies stable oxygen and radiogenic strontium isotope analyses on incremental samples of human tooth enamel, bulk tooth enamel, and bone to resolve mobility patterns. Sequential and bulk sampling techniques elucidate seasonal and residential mobility behaviors. Extensive environmental isotope samples of plant and water were collected through regional survey and establish local and regional isotopic baselines, which are compared to human isotope analysis results. Results Qizqala individuals exhibit low isotopic variability compared to regional contemporaries. 87 Sr/86 Sr ratios from human remains indicate seasonal and residential isotopic variability within the baseline ranges of local landscapes. δ18 O values display erratic patterns, but correspond to seasonal variability with fluctuations between highland and lowland altitudinal zone baseline values. Conclusions Results suggest that isotopic analysis of multiple elements and sequential enamel samples offers finer resolution on the complexities of human mobility strategies and elucidate the daily lives of often overlooked mobile populations. Higher resolution of individual mobility reveals shared routine behaviors that underscore the importance of diverse social collaborations in forming complex polities in the South Caucasus.