Movement of the ecosystem: Layers of the sheep migration in Georgia

In Georgia, sheep have always signified far more than a mere subsistence strategy for rural households. Within ethnographic symbolism and anthropological narratives, these animals emerge in myriad forms of life and meaning, interwoven with rudimentary agrarian dimensions and a way of existence deeply bound to space and the collective perception of territory. Sheep husbandry, understood as a profoundly reciprocal human–animal endeavour, has been rooted in Georgian culture for centuries, manifesting chiefly in two archetypes: the sedentary and the nomadic, each exhibiting subtle gradations and regional inflexions through time. The earliest documented testimony of this practice dates to 1595, in the sixteenth-century census known as The Great Book of Gurjistan Vilayet, compiled under Ottoman administration for tax assessment (Maisuradze & Khardziani, n.d.).

The present research delves into the nomadic dimension of sheep grazing—plumbing the territorial depths of transhumance, which today remains concentrated primarily in the country’s eastern reaches. Commonly reduced to the seasonal migration of shepherds and their flocks from lowland pastures to highland summits according to climatic rhythms, the practice’s inherent complexity is too often marginalised by this narrow depiction. Yet, as one follows the herds across shifting landscapes, it becomes impossible to ignore the mobile ecosystem they carry in their wake: insects, predators, herbs, seeds of the plants, noise, water, households, humancs, horses, donckeys, dogs, dust, wool fiber, feces, Binas, disease, smell and more…

Each stratum within this tapestry bears its own intricate dialectic, layered into the cultural and physical terrain alike. Thus, a multi-attitudinal, multidisciplinary methodology is indispensable for deconstructing the phenomenon: to discern what these traversed landscapes truly embody, how this vast, living system shapes the territory, and how the territory is being shaped by it. By mapping these manifold “traces” in both spatial and territorial dimensions—through shepherd interviews, photographic documentation, audio recordings, and archival materials—the project constructs an ever-evolving, multilayered cartography of migratory narratives, each map an unfolding palimpsest of pastoral life overlapped with the landscape facing contemporary frictions.

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