nomads

nomads, nomadism

Terms used to refer to groups who move from place to place, without a year-round permanent residence; bedouins are an example. Anthropologists have distinguished two broad types based on hunting-gathering and pastoralism respectively. The extent to which hunter-gatherers or pastoralists are independent of other sedentary groups is empirically variable. In the ideal type they are economically self-sufficient. A third nomadic group, excluded from the classical typology, are Gypsies, who are always interdependent with another economy, within which they provide occasional goods and services. Groups may be semi-nomadic-as in the case of some contemporary Lapps. See, The Traveller-Gypsies (1983).