INTRODUCTION

The domestic sphere of the encampment does not have sharp boundaries; people and animals move within and beyond this sphere frequently, but most of the herders' and herd animals' time and energy are spent within this co-domestic sphere. In the first part of this chapter I describe the importance of the social landscape of the herding encampment as the central sphere for establishing the co-domestic relationship between herding family and herd animals. Much of the herders' and herd animals' world is focused upon this core encampment, even though the location of the encampment itself migrates and changes with the seasons. The encampment is, therefore, not a fixed space that can be quantitatively measured; both people and animals inhabit it as an ecosocial sphere. Richard Nelson (1983: 243) describes a similar interweaving of life histories into the surrounding landscape in relation to the Koyukon people: “Each living individual is bound into this pattern of the land and people that extends throughout the terrain and far back across time.”