> >Transhumance is probably practiced to keep cattle off
> >arable land during the growing season.
>
>Definitional alarm here. Several contributors (including myself) have been
>using transhumance to denote the movement of cattle over *relatively long
>distances* to take advantage of seasonal and ecological variation. Ian seems
>to be using it in the sense of local rotation within the tula.
There's nothing in the dictionary definition about distance:
++++
Transfer of livestock from one grazing ground to another, as from
lowlands to highlands, with the changing of seasons.
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------[French from transhumer, to move livestock seasonally, from Spanish trashumar: Latin trns-, trans- + Latin humus, ground; see dhghem- in Indo-European Roots.]
The longer the distance, the closer you get to pastoral nomadism (I believe there are groups which move vast distances between pastures twice a year; they're considered nomadic, not transhumant).
David Dunham <mailto:dunham_at_pensee.com> Glorantha/HW/RQ page: <http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html> Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein
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