Terminology of mobile shepherds

Much of the specialist pastoral terminology, especially the designations for dairy and wool products, hide colours and livestock breeds are similar in Albanian, Greek, (Slavic) Macedonian and Aromanian despite belonging to different languages and language families. As many etymologies cannot be explained from any of these languages, it is often assumed that these common forms are based upon an unknown substrate. The project presented here will less emphasize on these etymologies, but first of all it will describe the activities and contact situations which are typical for mobile (nomadic, former nomadic) shepherds and which bring about the cultural exchange between shepherds belonging to different linguistic communities and the non-pastoralist population. The focus will be upon mobile pastoral societies and individuals and groups who have renounced nomadic pastoralism and now pursue local pasture farming or other professions. The observation of this process of re-orientation to other survival strategies will provide us with a better understanding of the social and professional conditions, contact situations and processes of linguistic contact as well as of assimilation and acculturation in the past and present. The goal therefore is to compile a cultural-geographic and ethno-linguistic documentation in the border triangle Albania, Greece and the Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), which describes the changes which mobile pastoral societies have experienced during the process of sedentarisation or are still experiencing. This research work must be commenced rapidly as, due to old age, those interlocutors who lived exclusively from long-distance pastoralism will not be available for interview for much longer. The comparison of the pastoral terminology refers to objects of everyday use, products and processes of long distance pastoralism and their designations in the four languages concerned and in the dialects spoken in the study region. The most important method for approaching this question is extensive field studies, whereby use will be made of a questionnaire compiled on the basis of various models which have proved useful in the past. The questionnaire consists (1.) of a narrative section regarding everyday pastoral life, the process of sedentarisation, material culture and the biography of the interview partner and (2.) of a list of words concerning objects and products. The questionnaire was tested in co-operation with the Balkan Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences during several field expeditions in Albania and Greece, and modified several times. The researchers named in the application have collaborated successfully in the preparatory phase and prior to this in other projects and are therefore all very familiar with the field work. The necessary contacts for the field studies have already been established.

Because of the juxtaposition of regions of different altitudes in a confined area and also the changing seasonal climatic conditions and the associated vegetation cycles, the mobile herdsmen of Southeast Europe drove their herds over long distances between the high altitudes in summer and the lowlands in winter. During the transitional seasons they would cover up to 400 km in a few weeks. For pastoral peoples it has always been important to find and use the best summer and winter grazing land. Relief, soil, climate and vegetation dictate the various forms of grazing management. The economic and political uncertainty in the past and today have also contributed to the development of nomadic pastoral family communities. Based on field research a distinction can be made between those communities that move between the same grazing areas every year and those that repeatedly seek new grazing grounds. The attempt to characterise the different economic forms practised by these nomadic herdsmen necessarily involves consideration of the terms mountain grazing, transhumance and nomadism. The variety of hunsbandry forms can be best understood by studying ownership. With nomadism the cattle belong to the head of the family and are inherited by the eldest son. With transhumancy the nomadic herdsmen do not own any cattle; they are paid by stationary herd owners who pursue other activities. With mountain grazing the herdsmen own their cattle in the proximity of inhabited settlements and move in summer with their families or seasonal workers into the mountains. With stationary husbandry, paddocking and single animal husbandry the herdsmen own their animals and keep them either permanently in grazing areas (continuous grazing) or alternate between grazing and mowing (rotational grazing). The formation of national states during the 19th and early 20th centuries brought an incisive change to the life of the nomadic herdsmen. In the Byzantine and Ottoman empires they had been able to drive their herds unhindered over great distances. Now, however, they were forced to pay high customs tariffs at the borders, until they were finally closed with the erection of the Iron Curtain. This obliged them to settle down. As a result of their nomadic life, they were able to escape administrative control and as such became a thorn in the eye for many politicians. The settlements also underwent considerable changes. The pure pastoral villages consisting in the case of nomadic groups of temporary huts or tents gave way to two-storey houses or cabins. The modest housing, which because of the materials used (straw, wood), merged very well with their natural surroundings, was replaced by a type of dwelling without any touristic or aesthetic value. They were generally made of concrete slabs or bricks with a corrugated iron roof and plastic sheeting to protect them from the snow and rain. Even today, however, although widespread nomadic herding has been extensively abandoned, grazing management remains important for the preservation and design of the cultural landscape of south-eastern Europe. The processes of becoming stationary settled influenced the languages of the different ethnic groups. Due to the described processes one can assume, that connection among monolingual rural population, multilingual urban population and seasonal incomplete multilingualism of illiterate shepherd communities increased the formation of linguistic interferences.