| The focus of this dissertation research is the systemic relationships between farming and pastoralism in the Basilicata region of southern Italy, investigating traditional, local agro-pastoral practises for similarities and differences across ecological habitats and altitudinal (vertical) gradients. Through fifteen months' field research I found that a common infrastructure exists between communities and across geographical zones, consisting of a long established integration of sheep and goats within cereal and forage legume rotations. The systemic relationships are an integral part of the larger Mediterranean environment, characterized by a vegetation mosaic composed of non-arable, spontaneous ("wild") plant communities (macchia and predominantly oak copses), sown fields, and fallow lands. Local ("traditional") knowledge embedded in technologies of prescribed burning and controlled grazing maintain a sustainable, productive environment in cultivated areas and in non-arable areas where fire, sheep and goats are the primary tools used by shepherds to maintain and renew plant communities. Pastori (shepherds/goatherders) move flocks of sheep and goats across diverse plant communities, thereby continually reintroducing selected plant species through seeds which survive the digestive process, are germination-enhanced by that same process, and are "sown" in their faeces. I conclude that sheep and goats are used both as agricultural tools and in maintaining plant productivity in non-arable areas, but especially as selective agents giving rise to mutualistic relationships that have coevolved between them (sheep and goats) and the plant communities upon which they rely. Thus I demonstrate how agricultural and pastoral technologies are integrated in practise through "traditional", local knowledge, and how these traditional and sustainable systems are both created by and create their environment. The transmission and persistence of this knowledge which integrates herding and farming is insured by the mutually beneficial relationship, while the way they are integrated in practise constitutes mixed farming. The flexibility of the systemic relations between farming and herding enables producers to shift production goals in response to market variations and poor growing seasons, and is essential to its stability and pivotal to its success in South Italy. |
