Although pastoral transhumance has been identified as “one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Mediterranean world” (Braudel), notably the herding practices and the sociocultural life of shepherds and pastoralists as well as their versatile role as actors in the late medieval Mediterranean space are still largely unexplored. When for example addressing shepherd communities in 15th–16th – century Southeastern Europe, it’s first and foremost the transhumant herding communities of Vlachs and Morlachs that inspire the idea of the Balkan pastoralism to this day. These herders pastured their herds on the meadows of the Dinaric Alps in summer, while seasonally migrating to warmer coastal areas in winter. In the Venetian realm on the Eastern Adriatic coast, they rented pastures in karst areas, entered into business relations with locals and, from the late 15th century onwards, also settled in the hinterland of Dalmatian cities. Apart from these transhumant Vlach and Morlach communities, however, also a sedentary local form of animal husbandry existed along the coast and on the islands of Venetian Dalmatia. While historiography often instrumentalized the former for narratives of ethnic and national origins, the latter has been studied only rather secondarily either by legal historians analysing communal statutes or by economic historians adopting quantifying approaches to outline the economic impact of animal husbandry.
This thematic groupage of dedicated studies aims at overcoming the boundaries of national historiographies and disciplinary traditions by comprehensively studying and discussing new insights into both transhumant and sedentary shepherd communities in the late medieval Mediterranean Basin –encompassing cases from the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and the Balkans up to the Greek realms in the Eastern Mediterranean. Its focus centres on scrutinizing different forms of pastoral communities, defined by sociocultural practices, seasonal routine and legal status, and the herders’ interaction with and perception by both state administration and (rural) society. Whereas shepherds, based upon their seminomadic lifestyle, were usually understood as marginal communities, these studies moreover emphasize their significant role in interconnecting rural and urban communities from different regions and cultural and political contexts. As economic agents, even if perceived as rather closed communities, shepherds had to be acquainted not only with local laws, market rules, prices and herding customs, but often – particularly in the case of transhumant pastoralism – also with varying political systems, borders and tax regimes as well as with different cultural contexts and environmental conditions. The mobility of flocks, the permanent need for fresh grass and water, the need for protection and settlement during winter and the need for markets for ovine products transformed the shepherds’ world into a fascinating but yet understudied field of, amongst others, cross-cultural interaction in the late medieval Mediterranean basin and its hinterlands.