Final answer:
Pastoral anthropology is a field that examines how societies dependent on herding domesticated animals operate, including their sociocultural structures, resource management, and relationships with animals and the environment.
Step-by-step explanation:
Pastoral anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that studies the social, cultural, and economic systems of societies mainly engaged in pastoralism. Pastoralism is the mode of subsistence associated with the care and use of domesticated herd animals, such as cattle, sheep, and goats. Anthropologists who focus on pastoral societies investigate a range of topics, including animal domestication, human-animal relationships, sociocultural organization, the management of natural resources, and how pastoralists interact with other subsistence strategies, such as farming.
Pastoralists live in complex sociocultural systems where herds are central to daily life and are markers of wealth and status. People in these societies establish close ties with their animals, are mobile, and frequently navigate vast rangelands to find grazing for their herds. They also possess extensive knowledge about animal behavior, the local environment, and maintain sustainable living practices by rotational grazing to avoid overuse of any single area.