Transhumance: Papers from the International Association of Landscape Archaeology Conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018

Mark Bowden · Pete Herring

Nov. 2021 · Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

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Transhumance presents a collection of papers exploring the practice, impact and archaeology of British and European transhumance, the seasonal grazing of marginal lands by domesticated livestock, usually accompanied by people, often young women. All but one were first given in 2018 at the Newcastle and Durham conference of the International Association of Landscape Archaeology. Their range is wide, geographically (Britain, Italy, Spain, France and Norway) and temporally (prehistory to the present day). The approaches taken include excavation and artefact analysis, fieldwalking, archaeological survey, landscape archaeology and history, analysis of ancient texts, inscriptions and records, ethno-archaeology, social network analysis and consideration of the delicate balances between the natural resources that transhumants exploit and the intangible cultures that are developed and sustained as they do so. The volume re-emphasises that much of European history and culture has been and in some places continues to be dependent on the annual migrations to and then back from the mountains, forests and bogs. It notes and explains how transhumance systems are not timeless and unchanging, but instead respond to wider economic and social changes. But, it also shows how transhumance itself contributes to changes, and continuities, including how the organisation of access to common pastures crystallises principles that underpin much broader legal and social systems.

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Mark Bowden BA, MCIfA, FSA, worked for over 30 years for Historic England and its predecessor bodies as a landscape archaeology surveyor and investigator, before retiring in 2020. Among his many research interests are common lands and he has undertaken much survey work in England’s uplands. He was founding Chair of the Landscape Survey Group 2014-2021 and is now an independent researcher. ;

Pete Herring MPhil, MCIfA, FSA, has spent over 40 years studying all aspects of the historic landscape of Cornwall and Britain, chiefly for Cornwall Archaeological Unit and Historic England. He has often turned to consideration of the commons and those who seasonally inhabited and used them, but has also enjoyed placing them in relation to the histories of the more permanently settled farmland and urban areas.