Temporalities in the study of mobility

The research group Political Ecology of Non-Sedentary Communities examines differently mobile societies from the Epipaleolithic in the Nile Delta to Neolithic and Aeneolithic settlements in the foothill plain of the Kopet Dag in Turkmenistan and Aeneolithic and Early Bronze Age groups in the Eastern European steppe. We recognize mobility as a feature of every society. To describe different forms, conditions, and strategies of mobility and avoid a dichotomy of non-sedentariness vs. sedentariness, we emphasize temporalities. In this context, crucial questions are how extensive, how routine or unusual, over what periods of time mobility occurs and which segment(s) of a group are engaged in different aspects of mobility. We exemplify our approach through a comparison of two case studies.