Summary

Nomadism is a technique of population movement used to accomplish a variety of goals. It is used for primary production when the resources to be tapped are distributed thinly over a wide space, or are located in different places in a large region. Commonly nomadism is a technique used in a spatially extensive adaptation. Pastoralists raising domestic animals on natural pasture move from grazed areas to areas with fresh pasture, and from dry areas to those with water.

Nomadism follows regular patterns where the resources tapped are reliable and thus predictable. This is common in macro-environmental adaptations to factors such as seasons and altitude. Some pastoralists have mountain adaptations, migrating to high altitudes in summer and low altitudes in winter, an adaptation called transhumance in Europe. Nomadic patterns are more irregular when rainfall patterns, and thus pasturage, are erratic and unpredictable, as is common in desert areas with low rainfall.

Among some pastoral peoples, all of the households in the community move together. Among other pastoral peoples, a sector of the populations is nomadic; young and/or mature men migrate with the livestock, while women, children, and elders remain in a stationary home settlement. This is also the pattern in European transhumance.

Many pastoral peoples produce primarily for their own subsistence; it is common that they have multi-resource or mixed economies, engaging also in hunting and gathering, horticulture, agriculture, and arboriculture. Economic activities are not limited to primary production; patterns of predation, including raiding and extortion, against other pastoralists, farmers, and traders are widespread. Other pastoral peoples are heavily market-oriented, producing for sale, or have symbiotic relations with hunters or cultivators; it is normal that they are more specialized in their production. But pastoralists can be found at all points on a continuum between subsistence- and market-oriented.