Континуитет и поражение на една регионална икономическа идеитичност
Transhumance in Aetolia: a mountain economy caught between storage and mobility

Summary/Abstract: Transhumance was an important survival strategy in the mountainous areas of Aetolia (the Southern Pindos and its offshoots) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This importance was related to the prevailing demographic and socio - economic conditions, in combination with the physical complementarity of the mountains and plains of Aetolia. Yet, transhumance was not the only, nor the dominant "genre de vie" of the region. In the mixed economy of the mountains, the move to winter pastures was only practiced when other solutions such as storage of fodder were insufficient. In ca.275 interviewed villages, a great variety of external forms of transhumance was encountered. A minority of the flocks and even smaller proportion of the population was transhumant in most villages. There is no proof in the sources that the ethnos of the Aetolians was known for stockbreeding or transhumance in antiquity. They were particularly notorious for brigandage. Few source references indicate that their economy was mixed one. The archeological record does not enable us to draw distinctions between various agro - pastoral exploitation strategies. However, the exchange between mountains and plains, either peaceful or violent, was vital element in the Aetolian economy. It is likely that transhumance added to this exchange and formed a bond between two different ecological zones within the territory of an emerging state.

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