Rationale OS5: Which of the following best characterises the dominant form of Neighbour Group mobility & sedentism, in regards to subsistence: sedentary, mobile, or mixed?

  • Sedentary
  • Mobile
  • Mixed

Goal

Here we are asking specifically about mobility and sedentism as it pertains to subsistence. The question and answers relate to the scholarly interests in hunter-gather societies, pastoral nomadic societies, and other such groups.

Definitions

  • Sedentary: A group is completely sedentary or group moves into and out of a central location that is maintained for more than one year.
  • Mobile: A group is mobile and moves the entire population from camp to camp as they go about the subsistence round.
  • Mixed: Group is mobile for at least half the year, and are otherwise sedentary at designated locations.

The question and possible answers are adapted from question B009 of the Binford Hunter-Gatherer Database (Binford 2001), and the Hunter-Gatherer and Their Neighbours Database (Bowern et al. 2013+; 2021). Variable B009 can be found in D-Place (Kirby et al. 2016; Kirby et al. 2018a; see https://d-place.org/parameters/B009#1/29/169).

Examples

  • Mobile: The entry for Tenino society (Tenino, Saptian; United States of America) in D-Place categorises the society as mobile. The local groups of Tenino each occupy two villages, one inhabited during winter months, while the other is occupied during warmer months and located near the Columbia River or its tributaries, enabling fishing activities during summer (Murdock 1980: 129).
  • Sedentary: The entry for Palawan Batak society (Batak, Austronesian; Philippines) in D-Place categorises the society as sedentary. The main forms of subsistence are collection of forest and riverine foods and upland rice cultivation, and Batak households tend to permanently habit a particular river and its watershed (Eder 1978: 57–58).
  • Mixed:**The subsistence pattern of the Twana society (Twana, Salishan; United States of America) can be best described as mixed. The Twana spend the winters in permanent villages until early spring, when the villagers disperse into smaller groups spending six to eight months in semi-nomadic activities, including fishing, hunting, and gathering. (Schalk 1978: 111–112, quoting Elmendorf 1960.)

Theoretical Support

The consequences of nomadism on linguistic structure appear related to the spread of languages. For example the mobile nomads of Eurasia were crucial in the spread of the Turkic languages (Yunusbayev et al. 2015) at different points in time. The deep and continued relationship between nomads and their sedentary neighbours is well attested (see Khazanov 2001), so one would expect this relational crux to be a point of interest for contact linguists.

Theoretically, nomadism may have consequences on linguistic structures due to it's social organisation. As has been argued for hunter-gatherers and their linguistic structures, the gross social organisation and interactional patterns of non-agriculturalists may have consequences for linguistic behaviours and long-term linguistic change (though see Bickel and Nichols 2020 for suggestion that are no structural differences between hunter-gatherer languages and sedentary languages). To the best of our knowledge, there have been no specific studies investigating the relationship between nomadism and linguistic structure, or language contact outcomes.

    Questions