Mobile Pastoralists Research Articles

Economic Diversification Supported the Growth of Mongolia\u2019s Nomadic Empires

Populations in Mongolia from the late second millennium B.C.E. through the Mongol Empire are traditionally assumed, by archaeologists and historians, to have maintained a highly specialized horse-facilitated form of mobile pastoralism. Until recently, a dearth of direct evidence for prehistoric human diet and subsistence economies in Mongolia has rendered systematic testing of this view impossible. Here, we present stable carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements of human bone collagen, and stable carbon isotope analysis of human enamel bioapatite, from 137 well-dated ancient Mongolian individuals spanning the period c. 4400 B.C.E. to 1300 C.E. Our results demonstrate an increase in consumption of C4 plants beginning at c. 800 B.C.E., almost certainly indicative of millet consumption, an interpretation supported by archaeological evidence. The escalating scale of millet consumption on the eastern Eurasian steppe over time, and an expansion of isotopic niche widths, indicate that historic Mongolian empires were supported by a diversification of economic strategies rather than uniform, specialized pastoralism.

CLOTTING NOMADIC SPACES: ON SEDENTISM AND NOMADISM

Abstract With reference to Jeffrey C. Kaufmann’s concept of a ‘sediment of nomadism’, for which pastoralism is still, implicitly or not, referenced and essentialised to ‘pure’ degrees of mobility and ‘pure’ food economies centred around livestock, this article argues that, in pastoral settings, sedentism is equally essentialised. This article reverses the traditional critique of the nomadism/sedentism dichotomy by questioning the relevance of ideal types of ‘pure sedentism’. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Northern Kenya arid lands, this article looks away from big cities and regional urbanities to focus on small settlements springing up along improved roads and telecommunications infrastructure, showing that places are never motionless, despite measures of emplacement promoted by national and local governments and the international community. The drilling of boreholes, the construction of health centres and schools, the distribution of aid does not stop the mobility of places nor of their inhabitants. Until places remain mobile, they are alive; otherwise they clot. This argument makes it possible to move beyond a dichotomic definition of sedentism and nomadism to value changes, flexibility, and plasticity as important features of places created and recreated by mobile pastoralists.

Early Pastoral Economies and Herding Transitions in Eastern Eurasia

While classic models for the emergence of pastoral groups in Inner Asia describe mounted, horse-borne herders sweeping across the Eurasian Steppes during the Early or Middle Bronze Age (ca. 3000–1500 BCE), the actual economic basis of many early pastoral societies in the region is poorly characterized. In this paper, we use collagen mass fingerprinting and ancient DNA analysis of some of the first stratified and directly dated archaeofaunal assemblages from Mongolia’s early pastoral cultures to undertake species identifications of this rare and highly fragmented material. Our results provide evidence for livestock-based, herding subsistence in Mongolia during the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE. We observe no evidence for dietary exploitation of horses prior to the late Bronze Age, ca. 1200 BCE – at which point horses come to dominate ritual assemblages, play a key role in pastoral diets, and greatly influence pastoral mobility. In combination with the broader archaeofaunal record of Inner Asia, our analysis supports models for widespread changes in herding ecology linked to the innovation of horseback riding in Central Asia in the final 2nd millennium BCE. Such a framework can explain key broad-scale patterns in the movement of people, ideas, and material culture in Eurasian prehistory.

'Where's the map?': Integrating ethnography with maps to understand the complementarity between pastoral mobility and border formation.

The resettlement of herders in pastoral zones is often criticized for hindering pastoral mobility, which is essential to survival. We integrate narratives of conflict and environmental change with maps to demonstrate the complementarity between pastoral mobility - porous borders- and border demarcation - rigid borders. We use evidence from the Sondré-Est Pastoral Zone in southern Burkina Faso, where herders were voluntarily resettled near agricultural villages following the droughts of the 1970s. Over time, however, farmers encroached on the borders of the pastoral zone and surrounding grazing areas declined. This increased land-use disputes. Tensions were exacerbated by the fact that these communities kept maps as community secrets. We re-created the administrative boundaries of the pastoral zone to map land-use/land-cover changes and conflict hot spots. The maps show that conflicts happened along porous borders where agricultural fields encroached. Herders called for a clear demarcation of the border of the pastoral zone to preserve exclusive access to resources within it. Simultaneously, they also wanted to maintain shared access to other resources outside the pastoral zone. The herders' desire for both border clarity and some form of flexibility underlines the complementary between both processes, especially in times of resource scarcity and land-use conflict. The mystery around the maps helps sustain ambiguity that is key for pursuing both goals.

Ecological consequence of nomad settlement policy in the pasture area of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau: From plant and soil perspectives

The prevailing trend in pasture areas worldwide is that of mobile pastoralism to settlement, which produces a positive impact on pastoral livelihoods and livestock husbandry. However, the impact of nomad settlement on the grassland ecosystem is not well documented and remains debatable. In response, from 2001 to 2015, the central Chinese government initiated the Nomad Settlement Policy (NSP). In this study, we conducted a case study of the pastoral area of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, to investigate impact of NSP on grassland ecological conditions including plants, soil and microorganisms. Results showed that grassland ecological conditions presented differentiation characteristics, with changes depending on the distance from settlements. The grassland ecological conditions showed heavy degradation near the settlement based on the classification of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau grassland degradation, and gradual improvement with increasing distance from the settlement. Based on our investigation and previous studies, we found that intervention of NSP decreased the distance in livestock mobility and led to intensive grazing near the settlement, thereby increased grassland degradation. At the same time, the grassland maintained a relatively good ecological condition with the increase in distance from settlement, which may be attributed to short-period grazing and light trampling effects. Our findings provide new insight into the grassland ecological condition in the aftermath of NSP implementation, and also put forward some measures (e.g. multi-household grazing management, pastoral cooperative) to restore the grassland degradation.

Discerning social interaction and cultural influence in Early Iron Age Mongolia through archaeometallurgical investigation

The cultural groups that resided in the Early Iron Age Eurasian steppe in the first millennium BCE are well-known for the establishment of trade networks that became increasingly active with the advent of horse riding, resulting in the transmission of metal, iconography, and other material goods throughout the region. The spread of metal types and forms iconography can be examined and taken as supportive evidence for the social and cultural interactions that existed between mobile pastoralists, who transversed the steppe and surrounding territories, with each other and sedentary groups. To better understand the extent of these interactions, chemical and lead isotopic data for 104 copper-alloy objects were acquired from three prominent cultural groups that existed in Mongolia [Slab Grave (n = 45), Pazyryk (n = 26), and Chandmani (n = 33)] and used to ascertain ore exploitation preferences and metal circulation patterning. In this assemblage, there is a clear compositional difference between the artifacts that originated near the Altai-Sayan Mountains in western Mongolia and those from east of the Khangai Mountains. In the former, the artifacts are characteristically arsenical copper and contain antimony, suggesting the exploitation and smelting of local fahlore deposits. For the latter, the artifacts are more commonly tin bronze with arsenic and lead; a composition similar to the alloys found in contemporary northern China. Overall, the chemical composition and isotopic signatures of these objects are varied—even within the same cultural group's assemblage—and can be explained by the seasonal migration of Mongolian herding communities and a tendency to exploit metallogenically diverse ore deposits. The nomadic nature of these communities likely resulted in the varied exploitation of ores throughout the year and the mixing of new and existing metal stock from the steppe and abroad.

Ceramics in Circumpolar Prehistory: Technology, Lifeways, and Cuisine ed. by Peter Jordan and Kevin Gibbs

Reviewed by: Ceramics in Circumpolar Prehistory: Technology, Lifeways, and Cuisine ed. by Peter Jordan and Kevin Gibbs Ian Gilligan (bio) Ceramics in Circumpolar Prehistory: Technology, Lifeways, and Cuisine Edited by Peter Jordan and Kevin Gibbs. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 234. Ceramic technology was a relatively late innovation in human prehistory. Recent research indicates that people began making pottery in northeastern Asia towards the end of the last Ice Age, around 16,000 years ago. In comparison, technologies for manufacturing tools from stone and bone, controlling fire, and preparing animal skins for clothing predate pottery by a million years or more. Despite this delayed appearance in the archaeological record, ceramics are traditionally viewed as a very significant technology. Originally, the advent of pottery was considered to be closely associated with a major transition: from the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) to the Neolithic (New Stone Age). The Neolithic period encompasses momentous changes that have transformed human society. These changes include the shift from a mobile or "nomadic" existence to a sedentary lifestyle, leading to the emergence of permanent villages, cities, and the advent of writing, which marks the dawn of the historical era around 5,000 years ago. The Neolithic is also linked to a fundamental change in social organization, from more-or-less egalitarian social relations to hierarchical social structures ("complex" societies). Last but not least, the neolithic witnessed a "revolution" in the economic sphere, from hunting and gathering to agriculture. This volume brings together papers from leading researchers to address key questions about early ceramic technology—namely, why was pottery invented, and what roles did ceramics play in these dramatic Neolithic changes? In the opening chapter, the editors highlight a few enigmas. One is that the earliest pottery has been discovered in a cold region, where cooking would be an obvious benefit. Yet pottery was absent when humans established a presence in the circumpolar region, which extends beyond 30,000 years ago. Clearly, ceramics were not needed for survival. Subsequently, pottery was adopted by mobile hunter-gatherers who evidently were not fazed by its heavy and fragile qualities and who manufactured pottery in difficult environmental conditions. Chapters in the book are devoted to archaeological evidence of early ceramics in Japan, Siberia, Scandinavia, and North America, supplemented by ethnographic examples. Ceramic vessels were mainly used to process marine resources, for instance to make fish soups and extract oils; other functions include storage containers, lighting, and heating. A culinary function might help to explain the widespread adoption of pottery, although the regional studies suggest pottery diffused across Eurasia in contexts of social complexity. Ceramic vessels, often well-decorated, became prestige artefacts, utilized for feasting on special occasions and not just as everyday utensils. A socially-contingent [End Page 1221] model best accommodates the enigmas of early pottery, consistent with views long advocated by Brian Hayden, who contributes the final chapter and summarizes the theoretical issues, the evidence available to date, and the areas needing further research. Collectively, these papers make a compelling case that ceramic technology was never essential for human survival or adaptation. A functional role in cooking probably gave pottery some advantages over alternative technologies, though not always. Neither, apparently, did the adoption of pottery result in any formative socioeconomic changes. Rather, pottery was sometimes favored as one of the highly-valued technologies in societies that were already becoming complex. Similarly, while ceramics commonly appear alongside agricultural activities and in sedentary and semi-sedentary communities, ceramics are also found among mobile hunter-gatherers and pastoralists; typically, the latter groups were trading ceramics. As an archaeological sign of sedentism, agriculture, or social complexity, pottery is quite unreliable. At best, ceramics serve as useful markers of cultural identities, trends, and contacts, and to assist in the interpretation of demographic patterns. Indeed, the consensus emerging from these contributions seems somewhat at odds with the historical significance granted to pottery. The privileging of pottery likely reflects its durability and visibility in the archaeological record, lending ceramics a prominence at the expense of perishable technologies like wood and fiber. Despite archaeology's focus on pottery as a pivotal technology or catalyst of social change, the advent of pottery was, surprisingly, almost...

A grave matter: linking pastoral economies and identities in the Upper Xiajiadian culture (1200-600 BCE), China

ABSTRACT The transition to the Upper Xijiadian period (1200–600BCE) in north-east China is often connected with the decline of agricultural settled life and the adoption of mobile pastoralism. Many see a deterioration of climatic circumstances as the reason for this change, while others have argued that this model is an oversimplification of the intricate socio-economic dynamics of the time. The extent and manner in which pastoralism was incorporated into the economy is still a matter of debate. This paper presents the results of the analysis conducted on grave location preference in the landscape, using data collected by the Chifeng international collaborative survey project. I argue that burial landscapes provide important insights into the discussion on Upper Xiajiadian pastoralism, both economically and symbolically. Based on these results, I suggest that mortuary practices may have reinforced the desire to practice pastoralism as an initially secondary economic strategy.

Late Neolithic 3-4 (6300-5900 BCE) and Cross-Cultural Encounters: Painted Pottery Revolution in Northern Mesopotamia and Northern Levant

Geç Neolitik, MÖ. 7000’den başlayıp 5500 ila 5100’e kadar devam eden dönemin adıdır. Eskiden bu devrin ikinci yarısı, Hassuna, Samarra, Halaf, Ubeyd olarak adlandırılan 4 maddi kültür topluluğu ekseninde tanımlanır; bu kültür evrenlerinin hem coğrafi hem de kronolojik açılardan ayırt edilebilir olgular olduğuna inanılırdı. Ama Geç Neolitiği numaralandırarak inceleyen yeni kronoloji anlayışı, adı geçen “kültür”ler arasındaki farkların sunî olduğunu ve 4 maddi kültür evreni arasında sürekli etkileşimler-geçişler yaşandığını ortaya koydu. Dönemin ortalarına denk düşen Geç Neolitik 3 (MÖ. 6300-6000) ve 4 (MÖ. 6000-5900) Yakın Doğu Tarihi açısından birer dönüm noktası oluştururlar. İlkinde, MÖ. 6200 iklim olayı denen soğuma ve kuraklaşma toplumları hareketli (yarı-göçebe) çobanlığa zorlamış, avcı-toplayıcı pratikler yeniden güçlenmiş, ikincil ürünler devrimi ile süt ve yün üretimi başlamış, yalın kapların yanına da “iyi mallar” olarak bilinen kaliteli çanak-çömlekler eklenmişti. İkinci alt-dönemi ise boyalı keramik devrimi şekillendirdi, çömlek ustaları Kuzey Mezopotamya’nın pek çok yerleşiminde neredeyse eşzamanlı olarak Hassuna ve Samarra tipi kapların boyalı örneklerini ürettiler. Fırın içindeki oksijen ve karbondioksit oranının denetimli biçimde değiştirilmesinden ibaret yeni pişirme tekniklerinin keşfedildiği bu devir, Halaf’ın gelişini haber verdiği için “Geçiş” ya da “Proto-Halaf” olarak adlandırılmıştır. Proto-Halaf nasıl yoğun kültürel etkileşim sayesinde Hassuna ve Samarra maddi kültürlerinin kaynaşmasının ürünü ise, Halaf döneminde (Geç Neolitik 5’te) de yoğun kültürel temas hız kesmeyecek ve bütün Kuzey Mezopotamya ve Kuzey Levant aynı maddi kültür temelinde bütünleşecektir.

About the mātum in Early Second Millennium Middle Euphrates Region. The Royal Inscriptions of Yahdun-Lîm

The Mari archives show the conspicuous presence of social groups committed to a mobile way of life in early second millennium Syria, but these never constituted an element foreign to settled farmers in the river valleys. If taken as different populations, one should recognize anyways that they were only ideal vectors that came from the same social milieu. In tune with this overall view of landscape, modern scholarship no longer assigns tribal characteristics exclusively to mobile groups, but instead understands a tribal socio political mode as a manner of resolving tensions in societies with signi cant mobile pastoralist components. Hence, apparently different social groups belonged to the same political entities and owed allegiance to the same authorities. The question now arises as to whether distinct cultural identities springing from the same socio-political soil need to be explained by the correlated existence of a single political unit encompassing them all (kingship) or we can see alternative ways of establishing social ties across distance. In early settings where expansionary kingship projects were still absent in the Middle Euphrates region, tribal identities seem to have offered an alternative or rather a complement to local urban citizenship, as we know from earliest Mari royal inscriptions. The matum category is used there for the first time to refer to socio-political entities on their own, not necessarily subordinate to larger polities.This work discusses the precise meaning of this term as used in the royal inscriptions of Yahdun-Lim.

Where tulips and crocuses are popular food snacks: Kurdish traditional foraging reveals traces of mobile pastoralism in Southern Iraqi Kurdistan

BackgroundIraqi Kurdistan is a special hotspot for bio-cultural diversity and for investigating patterns of traditional wild food plant foraging, considering that this area was the home of the first Neolithic communities and has been, over millennia, a crossroad of different civilizations and cultures. The aim of this ethnobotanical field study was to cross-culturally compare the wild food plants traditionally gathered by Kurdish Muslims and those gathered by the ancient Kurdish Kakai (Yarsan) religious group and to possibly better understand the human ecology behind these practices.MethodsTwelve villages were visited and 123 study participants (55 Kakai and 68 Muslim Kurds) were interviewed on the specific topic of the wild food plants they currently gather and consume.ResultsThe culinary use of 54 folk wild plant taxa (corresponding to 65 botanical taxa) and two folk wild mushroom taxa were documented. While Kakais and Muslims do share a majority of the quoted food plants and also their uses, among the plant ingredients exclusively and commonly quoted by Muslims non-weedy plants are slightly preponderant. Moreover, more than half of the overall recorded wild food plants are used raw as snacks, i.e. plant parts are consumed on the spot after their gathering and only sometimes do they enter into the domestic arena. Among them, it is worth mentioning the consumption of raw wild crocus corms, also still common in Turkish Kurdistan and that of wild tulip bulbs, which was documented to be popular until the beginning of the twentieth century in the Middle East. Comparison with other ethnobotanical field studies recently conducted among surrounding populations has shown that Kurds tend to gather and consume the largest number of non-weedy wild vegetables.ConclusionThe collected data indicate robust traces of nomadic pastoralism in Kurdish traditional foraging. This finding confirms that studies on wild food plant gathering in the Fertile Crescent and Turco-Arabic-Iranic regions of the Middle East are crucial for understanding the possible evolution of wild food plant gathering through history within the post-Neolithic continuum between pastoralism and horticulturalism.

English

This study specifically examined the pastoral mobility routes in relation to food security in Simanjiro and Handeni districts. The pastoralists from Simanjiro district usually migrate to Handeni and other areas as a coping strategy. During the pastoral mobility the pastoralists face different problems such as food insecurity. The data were collected by using participatory geographic information system (PGIS) and the descriptive data using questionnaire survey, focus group discussion and interviews. A total of 367 respondents were asked to fill the questionnaire, eight focus discussion one from each village, each focus group discussion comprised of eight members. The focus group discussions were assigned to locate the current and former mobility routes; once these points are reached the food is always finished, and all of these were located on the satellite image. Data show that 58% of the respondents said that the dynamics of the route was because of looking for shortcut path. Most of the pastoralists about 38.9% stayed 3 to 4 months in the destination area, 61% of the respondents had no access of food on the mobility route. 39% of the respondents had food during mobility and the food available was maize flour 44.4%, beans 20.7% and milk 18.5%. Therefore, it is evident that pastoral mobility has an impact on pastoral communities especially on food security since walking long distance searching pasture and water causes the livestock to be unhealth which lead to poor production of milk. This study recommends that the pastoralists especially the Maasai pastoralists should reduce the number of their livestock so that during drought season it could be easier to handle the livestock without deciding mobility which is more problematic, as it causes challenges such as death of livestock due to long distance travel to the pastoralists themselves and the livestock.   Key words: Pastoral mobility, pastoralism, food security, semi-arid areas.

Pastoralist strategies and human mobility: oxygen (δ18Op) and strontium (87Sr/86Sr) isotopic analysis of early human remains from Egiin Gol and Baga Gazaryn Chuluu, Mongolia

The steppes of Central Asia have long been inhabited by communities practicing various forms of mobile pastoralism as their primary means of subsistence. This study explores the relationship between human mobility and organizational strategies at two distinct micro-regions situated within the modern-day borders of Mongolia. Our investigation was based on an analysis of oxygen (δ18Op) and strontium (87Sr/86Sr) isotopes in archeological human skeletal remains (n = 30) from Baga Gazaryn Chuluu, situated within the middle Gobi Desert and the Egiin Gol Valley in north-central Mongolia. The results indicate a marked degree of separation in local baseline values between the two regions, and corresponding variation was observed in the human skeletal samples. Intra-regional comparisons found that most individuals appear to have spent their childhood years within a “local” range for each particular region, with several notable exceptions that likely indicate a greater degree of lifetime mobility for certain individuals. Overall, the results support the probability that mobility patterns in the past were related to subsistence strategies developed within the discrete environmental zones that characterize the central regions of Mongolia.

Where mobile groups settle: Spatial patterns and correlates of Maasai pastoralist sedentarization in Northern Tanzania

In the last century, mobile pastoralists around the world have transitioned to more sedentary lifestyles. Traditionally mobile people can be both pushed to settle by environmental or political forces, and pulled by new economic activities. While researchers have examined the causes and consequences of growing sedentarization, few contemporary studies have focused on the spatial patterns of settlement. This study examines settlement site selection using GIS and remote sensing techniques to quantify patterns and correlates of settlement location in four Maasai communities in northern Tanzania. We identify landscape scale factors that shape settlement locations and test the competing hypotheses that settlement is associated with: (1) resource access; (2) environmental constraints; and (3) infrastructural amenities. Spatial models offer support for each hypothesis, with slight variations. However, a combined model offers the greatest predictive power suggesting significant heterogeneity in site selection and/or a transition in selection criteria over time. These findings characterize a poorly understood aspect of the settlement of mobile groups, and point to new questions regarding the spatial drivers and consequences of sedentarization.

The Interwoven Effects of Regionalism in Southeast Thessaly

This study investigates possible evidence of seasonal movement of animals – transhumance – in the Greek archaeological record. By engaging with the so-called Agropastoral Debate in Thessaly this analysis argues that regionalism and rising urbanization forced a marked reliance on wool-based economy. The increased demand for wool created herd sizes larger than what local subsistence agriculture could support. Shepherds were required to move with their herds and utilize either short- or long-distance transhumance within Thessaly. This multidisciplinary approach examines transhumant domestication through ethnographic, ethnohistoric and literary sources integrated with palaeobotanical, material, cultural, and zooarchaeological evidence at Classical-Hellenistic sites in the regions of Thessalian Phthiotis (Pharsalos) and Achaia Phthiotis (New Halos, and Kastro Kallithea) in southeast Thessaly. Preliminary data supports mobile pastoralism in antiquity and argues for transhumant domestication in Thessaly by at least the Hellenistic period. This study is part of a larger research project interested in animal management practices and domesticated sheep and goat herd movements in ancient Thessaly.

Early integration of pastoralism and millet cultivation in Bronze Age Eurasia.

Mobile pastoralists are thought to have facilitated the first trans-Eurasian dispersals of domesticated plants during the Early Bronze Age (ca 2500–2300 BC). Problematically, the earliest seeds of wheat, barley and millet in Inner Asia were recovered from human mortuary contexts and do not inform on local cultivation or subsistence use, while contemporaneous evidence for the use and management of domesticated livestock in the region remains ambiguous. We analysed mitochondrial DNA and multi-stable isotopic ratios (δ13C, δ15N and δ18O) of faunal remains from key pastoralist sites in the Dzhungar Mountains of southeastern Kazakhstan. At ca 2700 BC, Near Eastern domesticated sheep and goat were present at the settlement of Dali, which were also winter foddered with the region's earliest cultivated millet spreading from its centre of domestication in northern China. In the following centuries, millet cultivation and caprine management became increasingly intertwined at the nearby site of Begash. Cattle, on the other hand, received low levels of millet fodder at the sites for millennia. By primarily examining livestock dietary intake, this study reveals that the initial transmission of millet across the mountains of Inner Asia coincided with a substantial connection between pastoralism and plant cultivation, suggesting that pastoralist livestock herding was integral for the westward dispersal of millet from farming societies in China.

Complexity as Integration: Pastoral Mobility and Community Building in Ancient Mongolia

Complexity as Integration: Pastoral Mobility and Community Building in Ancient Mongolia

Network analyses to quantify effects of host movement in multilevel disease transmission models using foot and mouth disease in Cameroon as a case study.

The dynamics of infectious diseases are greatly influenced by the movement of both susceptible and infected hosts. To accurately represent disease dynamics among a mobile host population, detailed movement models have been coupled with disease transmission models. However, a number of different host movement models have been proposed, each with their own set of assumptions and results that differ from the other models. Here, we compare two movement models coupled to the same disease transmission model using network analyses. This application of network analysis allows us to evaluate the fit and accuracy of the movement model in a multilevel modeling framework with more detail than established statistical modeling fitting methods. We used data that detailed mobile pastoralists’ movements as input for 100 stochastic simulations of a Spatio-Temporal Movement (STM) model and 100 stochastic simulations of an Individual Movement Model (IMM). Both models represent dynamic movement and subsequent contacts. We generated networks in which nodes represent camps and edges represent the distance between camps. We simulated pathogen transmission over these networks and tested five network metrics–strength, betweenness centrality, three-step reach, density, and transitivity–to determine which could predict disease simulation outcomes and thereby be used to correlate model simulation results with disease transmission simulations. We found that strength, network density, and three-step reach of movement model results correlated with the final epidemic size of outbreak simulations. Betweenness centrality only weakly correlated for the IMM model. Transitivity only weakly correlated for the STM model and time-varying IMM model metrics. We conclude that movement models coupled with disease transmission models can affect disease transmission results and should be carefully considered and vetted when modeling pathogen spread in mobile host populations. Strength, network density, and three-step reach can be used to evaluate movement models before disease simulations to predict final outbreak sizes. These findings can contribute to the analysis of multilevel models across systems.

Making Pastoralists Count: Geospatial Methods for the Health Surveillance of Nomadic Populations.

.Nomadic pastoralists are among the world’s hardest-to-reach and least served populations. Pastoralist communities are difficult to capture in household surveys because of factors including their high degree of mobility over remote terrain, fluid domestic arrangements, and cultural barriers. Most surveys use census-based sampling frames which do not accurately capture the demographic and health parameters of nomadic populations. As a result, pastoralists are “invisible” in population data such as the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). By combining remote sensing and geospatial analysis, we developed a sampling strategy designed to capture the current distribution of nomadic populations. We then implemented this sampling frame to survey a population of mobile pastoralists in southwest Ethiopia, focusing on maternal and child health (MCH) indicators. Using standardized instruments from DHS questionnaires, we draw comparisons with regional and national data finding disparities with DHS data in core MCH indicators, including vaccination coverage, skilled birth attendance, and nutritional status. Our field validation demonstrates that this method is a logistically feasible alternative to conventional sampling frames and may be used at the population level. Geospatial sampling methods provide cost-affordable and logistically feasible strategies for sampling mobile populations, a crucial first step toward reaching these groups with health services.

The Emergence of Mobile Pastoral Elites during the Middle to Late Holocene in the Sahara

Abstract Different emphases on ideological, socio-economic and technological changes have been brought to bear on the cultural variability made materially manifest in pre-Iron Age Saharan pastoral societies. The models have ranged from limited or no complexity before iron production to transient mobile elites across the Sahara, to socially complex communities from the mid-Holocene onwards in the Central Libyan Sahara, and to permanent elites with complex social structures. Here, ethnographic cultural variability is stressed, previous models detailed, and data for the Eastern and Central Sahara summarised and analysed. The emerging picture is of a mosaic of population movements, clustering and experimentation resulting in transient peaks of wealth and the potential for incipient social complexity to become temporarily or permanently manifest. Saharan social diversity serves as a warning against linear models and highlights the importance of an explanatory framework for investigating the evolution of social structures outside of permanently settled communities for North Africa.