The tent is one of the most primitive types of habitation known to man. The tent incorporates all the main elements of any small house : partitions, supporting pillars, a roof, flooring, entrance etc. Nevertheless, the tent is much more than just a rudimentary canopy under which an occupant can eat and sleep - the tent is a mobile shelter, a portable home par excellence.
The tent is associated with the earliest forms ofnomadism. As such it is an essential accessory for all human activities requiring a shelter capable of being erected and dismantled in a relatively short space of time. Nomadism however does not only refer to movement and to the concomitant need for a mobile dwelling – nomadic populations have always searched pastures where they could reside in a more sedentary manner.
This point is important since it undermines to some extent the division that has often been made between sedentary agricultural societies on the one hand and nomadic pastoral ones on the other. Until recently the two were considered as rivals, that is to say as two potentially conflicting ways of exploiting the land. One has only to think of the marauding barbarian tribes in contrast to the civilised Roman towns to grasp the point. Stereotypes such as these have long been models of thought. Today, thanks to new research, a new and more civilised form of nomadism has emerged.
