Seasonal livestock movements in the Balkans: character, history, transformations

Abstract

was based on seasonal movements of people and their large sheep or (to a lesser extent) goat flocks between summer and winter pastures. During the summer livestock was grazed on high pastures in the mountains, and in the autumn it was driven to warm coastal plains, dales or river valleys where there was enough grass until the next spring vegetation season in the mountains. This type of animal husbandry was subject to constant change in a centuries-long process which saw different phases and took different courses in different parts of the Balkans (depending on the concrete geographical, social and political circumstances). For all changes it had undergone during the medieval period and a few centuries of Ottoman rule, the practice of large-scale seasonal livestock migration continued until the twentieth century. The practice still survives, though on a considerably reduced scale and in a modified form. This paper discusses the following questions: the influence of political changes on seasonal livestock movements in the Balkans from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century; information about seasonal livestock movements in the Balkans provided by travellers and scholars; recent zones of seasonal livestock movements in the Balkans; the social organization and status of Vlach herders in the Balkans in the middle ages; changes in the status and mode of organization of seasonal herders in the Ottoman period. In this connection, the term “the Balkan Peninsula/the Balkans” has been clarified.