El desarrollo de la trashumancia y los orígenes medievales de la cuadrilla mesteña soriana

Abstract

This article is a contribution to the history of the transhumance and the Mesta, focusing on the region comprised by the one of the Mesta's four districts: Soria, a district enjoying certain rights of precedence in this institution. The author shows that the activity of transhumant ranching developed early in this region, in particular in its mountainous sector, not only in seigneurial territories like Yanguas, but also in royal territories like Soria. Until the fifteenth century, transhumance was basically an activity designed to ensure the subsistence of peasant families living in territories unsuitable for agriculture. But from the beginning of the fifteenth century, as a consequence of the sudden increase in the international demand for wool, it increasingly engaged in speculation, stimulating both social mobility and the development of a group of big sheep-owning families who largely monopolized transhumant livestock until the beginning of the nineteenth century.