Mobile pastoralist activities occur at different scales across the landscape, including local, regional, and supra-regional scales. Most archaeological studies of mobile pastoralist social organization have focused on the latter two scales via the extant monumental and herding landscapes. Household levels of analysis figure much less in these studies. This volume brings together the work of archaeologists currently engaged in mobile pastoralist household research in different regions of the world to highlight the importance of household studies and the utility of both archaeological and ethnoarchaeological approaches in understanding mobile pastoralist household formation, continuity, and adaptation to environmental, social, economic, and political change.

Jean-Luc Houle is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University. His research interests focus on the social and ritual construction of landscapes among Bronze and Iron Age mobile pastoralists in Mongolia, and how all this relates to the development of complex societies in Inner Asia. His research has been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, with funding from the Henri Luce Foundation, the Rust Family Foundation, and Western Kentucky University. Houle’s publications can be found in several books and journals, including Oxford Handbooks Online in Archaeology, Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Quaternary International, and Archaeological Research in Asia.

“Overall, this is an excellent volume that truly takes the study of pastoralism to new places. It replaces pedantic, by-now routine archaeological discussions of what pastoralists are and how to read mobility in the ancient record with concrete examples and thoughtful discussions about the humanity behind the archaeological record.” • Lynne M. Rouse, German Archaeological Institute