ABSTRACT
Mobile pastoralism is a largely unresolved issue in Mediterranean archaeology. In historical times, it is well documented in Italy and Spain as an important branch of the economy and a widespread lifestyle over several hundreds of years – so much that it was considered a major element of the longue durée in the seminal work of Fernand Braudel. However, its place and importance in the ancient world have long been difficult to place. Several literary sources suggest that already in archaic times (eighth to fifth centuries BCE) shepherds moved around with their flocks in the Mediterranean area, the most prominent perhaps being Sophocles’ story of the baby prince Oedipus: the Theban shepherd who was ordered to kill the child instead gave it to a Corinthian shepherd regularly arriving to the same highland pastures in the Kithairon mountains. This testifies to the practice of transhumance not only in conceptions of the heroic past but also in the second half of the fifth century BCE when the tragedy was written. Despite this sort of evidence, scholarship has typically relegated transhumant pastoralists to the periphery – both figuratively and literally. The chapter seeks to identify and present the evidence for mobile pastoralism in archaic southern Italy and its possible relevance as an exchange network and a means of transfer of ideas, knowledge, and commodities. Because of the perishable and seasonal nature of the remains of mobile pastoralists, and the difficulty of finding direct archaeological evidence for this kind of economy, indirect factors like social organisation, social structure, and their development through time, derived especially from cross-cultural ethnological comparisons, will be taken into account. I will propose a model of cultural exchange that acknowledges the importance of the mobility of the indigenous inhabitants of pre-Roman southern Italy for processes of cultural exchange.
