Why Pastoralism?

[Turnus]

I've been playing a Sauromatae campaign and I can't help wondering why there is such a demarcation between 'nomadism' and 'pastoralism'. I assumed that the former is supposed to refer to the lifeways of the steppe peoples, and the latter to sedentary peoples, but I'm not sure if this makes sense. The Sauromatae (and similar peoples) were in fact pastoralists, and actually lived as nomads due to the need to rotate their large amounts of livestock through different pastures. The two terms are not by any means mutually exclusive, which they seem to be in the mod. Have I misunderstood something, or did EB really mean to have something like 'agrarianism' rather than 'pastoralism'? In any case EB is extremely accurate and enjoyable, and I was just wondering about this minor issue.

[antisocialmunky]

I've always throught of the EB as depicting nomadism on the steppe vs nomadism in the mountains and valleys. Both lifestyles are nomadic but the difference is that the steppe lifestyle emphasizes - as you said - moving herds through vast tracts of land while the mountain lifestyle emphasizes moving up and down the climate bands of mountains as still practised by modern day Iranian nomads. This 'pastorialism' is more localized since they tend to move through the same locations yearly and herders often pass through populated valley with settles agrarian cities that they trade with for things they cannot furnish themselves. This type of pastorialism in EB seems to be what we would call 'transhumance.'

But I bet an EB guy can give you better answer. I am by far not an expert at this.

[Turnus]

Thanks for the answer, I think that makes sense now, because I suppose that the allied government would be the actual agrarian state controlled by a steppe faction, while both nomadism and pastoralism are supposed to be the result of migration of steppe peoples, who can either continue their purely nomadic way of life, or slightly alter it in the way that you described.