Tribes Chiefs and Transhumance

Today was our last morning in Fontecchio and we are now on our way to Amalfi. We stopped at a sheep farm in the mountains where we learned a little bit about what it takes to operate a sheep farm. This allowed us to compare how animal farming has changed throughout the years when we compare it to what we learned yesterday. Here is a picture of some of the sheep we saw.

We stopped yesterday at two churches and hiked up to a castle where we had an incredible view of the valley. Alessio told us about transhumance and how the little villages were all set up along the transhumance path. We learned about how this path affected the Abruzzo region and how villages were able to collect taxes from the shepherds that came through. Below is a picture from the castle.

The article I read today was called Tribes Chiefs and Transhumance. It discussed how transhumance works in different societies, tribes with chiefs, tribes without and areas without tribes or chiefs. The article specifically looked at examples from arid and semi-arid regions and one of the main points made was that areas where there is high risk, especially related to weather conditions, tend to have chiefs to help reduce uncertainty.