Impact statement
This article highlights the role of ethnoarchaeology in transforming how we perceive pastoralist communities and the drylands they inhabit. Historically marginalized, pastoralism has often been seen as backward or environmentally harmful, particularly in arid regions. However, by engaging directly with present-day pastoral societies, it became clear that they are innovators who have developed sophisticated strategies for living sustainably in some of the world’s most challenging environments.
Focusing especially on drylands, this study shows how ethnoarchaeology helps us rethink these landscapes – not as barren peripheries, but as vibrant centers of human creativity and resilience. Through this lens, drylands emerge as places where communities have long practiced dynamic, flexible ways of life that ensure food security and ecological balance. Beyond offering new insights into the past, an ethnoarchaeological approach challenges outdated models of history and development. It promotes a more inclusive and respectful engagement with Indigenous knowledge systems, supporting the broader decolonization of academic research. By showing how ethnoarchaeology can integrate diverse ways of knowing, this work contributes to ongoing efforts to make the discipline more socially relevant, globally informed, and ethically grounded.
Introduction
Ethnoarchaeology has long been more than just a method or an approach within archaeology; it has been an engine for critical reevaluation. This article argues that in the study of pastoralism, ethnoarchaeology acted as a crucial bridge – not only between the living present and the materiality of the past, but also between archaeology and the transformative insights of anthropology, history and ecology. By occupying this vital space, it fostered a conceptual twist, forcing archaeology to confront its own “sedentary” biases and fundamentally reshaping how both the discipline and the study of drylands are understood. This process illuminated the complexity of dryland livelihoods, demonstrating that mobility, adaptation and resilience are central, not marginal, aspects of human–environment relations.
This transformation was catalyzed by a challenge: a growing disconnect between the dynamic, resilient pastoral societies being described by other disciplines in the last quarter of the 20th century and their near-invisibility in the archaeological record. This article reflects on how the effort to solve this methodological problem led to a profound epistemological shift. Ethnoarchaeology became a form of critical practice, compelling the discipline to innovate its methods, challenge well-established frameworks and integrate Indigenous knowledge systems. Ultimately, this process did more than just add pastoralists to the archaeological map. It demonstrated how engaging with the present can decolonize our understanding of the past, making ethnoarchaeology a more ethically grounded and globally relevant science.
Rethinking pastoralism: A transdisciplinary reckoning
For much of the twentieth century, drylands and the pastoral societies inhabiting them were fundamentally misunderstood and often dismissed as marginal or unproductive. Areas receiving less than 450 mm of rainfall per year are typically categorized as “nonproductive” without irrigation (Rockström and Falkenmark, Reference Rockström and Falkenmark2015), yet ethnographic evidence shows that even hyperarid regions support rainfed farming alongside pastoralism, highlighting the adaptability of local practices (Lancelotti et al., Reference Lancelotti, Biagetti, Zerboni, Usai and Madella2019; Biagetti et al., Reference Biagetti, Zurro, Alcaina-Mateos, Bortolini and Madella2021). This failure to recognize the productivity of drylands reflects the marginalization of pastoralism itself. In reality, pastoralism remains the most effective mode of production in these environments, supporting around 25% of the Earth’s land area (FAO, 2020). Through flexible mobility, herd management and labor strategies, pastoralists turn ecological variability into resilience. Yet, for centuries, classical, medieval and colonial traditions cast them as irrational and primitive nomads, contrasting them with agriculturalists. This dichotomy – rooted in sedentary bias – persisted well into modern scholarship (Hammer, Reference Hammer2025: 20–32).
A decisive reappraisal began in the 1980s, though not from within archaeology. Anthropologists such as Hjort (Reference Hjort1982) dismantled the “tragedy of the commons” model, showing that pastoral mobility is a rational adaptation to nonequilibrium environments (see also Fratkin, Reference Fratkin1997 and Sneath, Reference Sneath2007). New Rangeland Ecology (Behnke et al., Reference Behnke, Scoones and Kerven1993) reframed drylands through the lens of variability and resilience, while historians and political ecologists (e.g., Henrichsen, Reference Henrichsen, Bollig, Schnegg and Wotzka2013; Potts, Reference Potts2014) revealed pastoralists as central economic and political actors. This perspective transformed pastoralism from a system in crisis into a model of intelligent adaptation (Krätli and Schareika, Reference Krätli and Schareika2010).
This revaluation, however, exposed a serious disciplinary lag in archaeology, struggling with elusive footprints of ancient pastoralists. The challenge was no longer theoretical but methodological: How to render visible a way of life that left behind ephemeral traces. Ethnoarchaeology – anchored in direct observation of living systems – was uniquely positioned to meet this challenge.
The ethnoarchaeological motor: From theoretical problem to critical practice
The past decade has witnessed a significant revival in the archaeology and ethnoarchaeology of pastoralism. Recently published works, such as Mobile Pastoralist Households (Houle, Reference Houle2024) and The Archaeology of Pastoralism (Hammer, Reference Hammer2025), testify to a field that has matured theoretically and methodologically. A comprehensive review of case studies about the ethnoarchaeology of pastoralism is not the goal here. Instead, this section focuses on the conceptual “motor” that drove this transformation: the convergence of theoretical critique and empirical practice that allowed ethnoarchaeology to regenerate the archaeology of pastoralism.
For much of its history, the archaeology of pastoralism was constrained not merely by weak analogies, but by the dominance of ethnographic models that portrayed pastoral life as static, typological and ecologically predetermined. Influential syntheses, such as Khazanov’s (Reference Khazanov1984) study, presented mobility and herd management as fixed features of cultural taxonomy rather than as dynamic, context-dependent practices. This rigidity left archaeology without the means to engage with the variability and fluidity of pastoral systems, especially in drylands. Faced with this gap, archaeologists increasingly turned toward ethnographic fieldwork themselves – not to borrow analogies, but to build them. It was this turn, exemplified by pioneering work, such as David’s (Reference David1971), Robbins (Reference Robbins1973), Robertshaw’s (Reference Robertshaw1978), Hole’s (Reference Hole and Kramer1979) and Smith’s (Reference Smith, Williams and Faure1980) studies, that transformed the study of pastoralism into an explicitly ethnoarchaeological endeavor. In doing so, it shifted the focus from typological categories to lived processes, from “pastoral types” to adaptive strategies observed in real time (see also Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson, Reference Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson1980).
Ethnoarchaeology supplied that engagement. Initially, it emerged defensively – its practitioners seeking to legitimize ethnographic analogy against mainstream skepticism (Biagetti, Reference Biagetti and Smith2020). But through this struggle, it became a laboratory for methodological innovation. By closely observing how social and environmental choices materialize in space (e.g., Cribb, Reference Cribb1991) and in the landscape (e.g., Hole, Reference Hole and Kramer1979), ethnoarchaeologists learned to read the elusive: the spatial logic of camps, the distribution of dung, the layering of trampled floors and the micropatterns of discard. What earlier archaeologists saw as absence became evidence of adaptation. Studies such as those by Chang and Koster (Reference Chang and Koster1986), Brochier et al. (Reference Brochier, Villa, Giacomarra and Tagliacozzo1992) and Shahack-Gross et al. (Reference Shahack-Gross, Marshall and Weiner2003) were pivotal in this regard, demonstrating how penning facilities along with microscopic and geochemical analyses of dung, floors and sediments could reveal patterned human–animal interactions and site formation processes. Through these works, the ephemeral was transformed into a new kind of archaeological visibility – one grounded in the materiality of livestock-related structures, and other in the understanding of the specificity of the traces of animal husbandry.
In this sense, ethnoarchaeology became a two-way bridge: connecting archaeology to both the living present and to theoretical advances in anthropology and ecology. As a bridge to the present, it forced archaeologists to directly observe how complex social dynamics – mobility, household decision making, herd management – translate into material traces. As a bridge to other disciplines, ethnoarchaeology provided the empirical grounding that allowed archaeology to converse with resilience theory and ecological models of nonequilibrium systems (Behnke et al., Reference Behnke, Scoones and Kerven1993; Krätli and Schareika, Reference Krätli and Schareika2010). What ecologists described in theoretical terms, ethnoarchaeologists could demonstrate in the ground: adaptive strategies, flexible land use and resilience as lived, material practice.
By engaging directly with the present, ethnoarchaeology redefined what could count as archaeological evidence. The study of dung layers, hearth residues and trampled sediments was not simply a technical refinement – it was an epistemic one. It expanded the field’s capacity to recognize alternative modes of human–environment engagement, and in doing so, it reconfigured archaeology’s relation to pastoralism itself. Through this process, the archaeology of pastoralism was not only revitalized, but it was also regrounded in the ecological and cultural logic of drylands, seen at last not as marginal landscapes, but as spaces of knowledge, resilience and innovation.
Conclusion
The long trajectory of pastoralist ethnoarchaeology illustrates how methodological struggle can become intellectual transformation. By bridging the present and the past, ethnoarchaeology forced archaeology to confront its assumptions and to rethink what counts as evidence. It turned the elusive into the legible, the ephemeral into the interpretable.
The impact of the ethnoarchaeology of pastoralism is twofold. First, it served as an epistemological catalyst within archaeology. The challenge of materializing mobility compelled archaeologists to engage seriously with Indigenous and local knowledge – not as a theoretical or political stance, but as a methodological necessity. To understand the materiality of mobile lifeways, archaeologists had to learn the knowledge systems that shape them: herding practices, seasonal movements, landscape reading and the social logics that underlie ephemeral architecture and discard (see Chang and Koster, Reference Chang and Koster1986; Brochier et al., Reference Brochier, Villa, Giacomarra and Tagliacozzo1992; Shahack-Gross et al., Reference Shahack-Gross, Marshall and Weiner2003; Biagetti, Reference Biagetti2014). This engagement produced more reflexive and plural forms of knowledge production, in which Indigenous and local expertise became essential analytical partners rather than external ethnographic contexts (Atalay, Reference Atalay2006; Rizvi, Reference Rizvi2015).
This reflexive turn also resonates with recent reflections on the future of ethnoarchaeology. Cunningham (Reference Cunningham, Tartaron and Kassabaumin press) argues that the critical potential of ethnoarchaeology lies in its capacity to expose archaeology’s own positionality – its entanglement with dominant discourses shaped by nationalism, imperialism, colonialism and androcentrism. By engaging with alternative and marginalized perspectives, ethnoarchaeology becomes a form of standpoint analysis that broadens interpretive baselines and enhances objectivity through plurality rather than detachment. Such critical reflection enables archaeologists to recognize how their own epistemic positions shape interpretation, challenging assumptions rooted in power structures. In doing so, ethnoarchaeology contributes to a more inclusive, reflexive and ultimately emancipatory discipline – one capable of generating narratives that are both scientifically rigorous and socially accountable (see also Biagetti, Reference Biagetti2024).
Second, for the interdisciplinary study of drylands, ethnoarchaeology offered a deep-time perspective on resilience, providing the tools to reposition these landscapes from the margins to the center of human history. Not differently than the reappraisal of rainfed agriculture mentioned at the beginning of this article, this point underscores the enduring relevance of the ethnoarchaeological approach: to see in the present, the complexity that makes the past intelligible. By reconnecting archaeology with lived experience and with other ways of knowing, ethnoarchaeology did not simply produce new answers – it expanded the field of who gets to ask the questions.
Open peer review
For open peer review materials, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/dry.2025.10011.
Acknowledgements
This study is funded by the European Union (ERC CoG, CAMP, 101088842). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. The author is a member of CASEs, a Quality Research Group recognized by the Agencia de Gestión de Ayudas Universitarias y de Investigación (the Catalan Agency for Research) (AGAUR-SGR 212).
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
Open access
Comments
Dear Editors of Drylands,
I am pleased to submit my manuscript entitled “The Long Road: Ethnoarchaeology, Pastoralism, and the Reconfiguration of Archaeological Knowledge” for consideration in Drylands.
This paper addresses the transformative role of ethnoarchaeology in advancing our understanding of pastoralism, particularly in dryland regions. Drawing on case studies and theoretical developments, it highlights how the ethnoarchaeological study of pastoral societies has reshaped archaeological thought, challenged Eurocentric narratives, and contributed to a re-evaluation of drylands—not as marginal, degraded spaces, but as dynamic landscapes of innovation and resilience.
Given the journal’s focus on interdisciplinary research in dryland environments, I believe this article will be of interest to your readership. It bridges archaeology, anthropology, and environmental studies, offering insights that are both historically grounded and relevant to contemporary debates on sustainability, land use, and Indigenous knowledge systems.
I confirm that the manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by any other journal. I have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Thank you for considering this submission. I look forward to the possibility of contributing to Drylands.
Sincerely,
Stefano Biagetti