In Pastoralist Landscapes Frachetti writes, “The geography and history of Central Eurasia are inseparable.  Together they reflect the formation of Eurasia's diverse landscapes through time.”¹ Frachetti’s remarks are a reminder of the significance of understanding the potential social context in which the religions of YHWH and Ahura Mazda originated. If, as it appears, the histories of these religions deemed monotheistic began in mobile pastoralist settings, then it may be possible to examine the “inseparable” ties with the geographic contexts to understand the influence of the natural environments on the development of these religions. Although his research focuses on ancient societies in the Eurasian Steppe, Frachetti’s work offers important opportunities for understanding processes of social and cultural development across the category of mobile pastoralist societies. 

Frachetti’s “Non-Uniform Complexity Theory” is aimed at explaining the apparent differences in institutional development between societies in the Eurasian Steppe.² He writes, “Archaeological research increasingly illustrates that Bronze Age societies of the Eurasian steppe were inherently more diverse in their ways of life than their related material culture might imply. Bronze Age steppe communities illustrate comparatively different scales of social, economic, and political organization, as well as local variability in their extents of mobility and geographic ranges of interaction.”³ This observation is key to understanding the diverse variety of societies that might belong to a category called “mobile pastoralism.” In Pastoralists Salzman uses a variety 20^thcentury ethnographic studies on “nomadic pastoralists” to understand the nature of this category. A notable observation reiterated throughout the work is that scholars should expect to find variety among and differences between mobile pastoralist societies rather than similarities.⁴ This supports Frachetti’s evaluation that this category is defined, in part, by heterogeneity, consolidation, and fragmentation.⁵ Considering the range of options for expressions of “mobility” and “pastoralism” it is not difficult to understand how variety could be the “norm” for this category. 

Frachetti’s theory suggests that the roots of this diversity lie in the pragmatic responsiveness of each society to the various social and natural landscapes in which they function.⁶ This “Environmental Pragmatism” is not limited to a single event or particular institution in the history of the societies, rather it describes a society-level perspective of strategic adaptability in all domains.⁷ Frachetti writes, “Non-uniformity is the result of some general institutional codes being homogenized between diverse groups or re-shaped among them for strategic purposes, while other institutions remain individually or specifically defined. Thus, for each participant community, its degree of organizational consolidation or fragmentation vis-à-vis its neighbors depends on the scalar cohesion of various institutional structures and the periodic willingness of those communities to adopt or develop similar constraints to their modes of interaction.”⁸ Frachetti’s claims reframe the concept of “survival” in mobile pastoralist societies as a paradigm of strategic evaluation, deliberation, and innovation. Frachetti explains that this process is dynamic and continuous: 

Scalar reorganization is well documented ethnographically among pastoralist groups.  Pastoralists strategically negotiate their political and environmental landscape, periodically causing aspects of institutional parity to collapse, or fraction. In such periods, groups commonly regress to smaller-scale units, and their shared institutions and practices may be regionally reformulated to be relevant at the extant scale of political integration. Fractioning is reflected archaeologically in periods of material diversity and landscape reform (changes in settlement geography, burial diversity, etc.). The inherent variability of mobile pastoral strategies often precludes long-term stability at a given state of organization; throughout the second millennium bce, various steppe groups teetered on the edge of more highly institutional forms of social and political integration. These periods of social consolidation and fractioning, fundamental to the model proposed here, confound a conventional picture of progress from simpler to categorically more complex organization in a linear socio-evolutionary sense. ⁹

The picture suggested by Frachetti is one that does not just merely “confound a conventional” idea of institutional development based on settled agricultural models, but also upsets familiar depictions of mobile pastoralists as peoples acted upon rather than actors in their own right. 

In his introduction to Change and Development in Nomadic Pastoral Societies, John G. Galaty warns, “Pastoralists have perspectives on agencies of change, and we would do well to try to understand change from within, as part of a complex field of symbols and significant events in multiple domains and sectors, rather than from without, in just another monologue of national ‘development’ within an academic social science.”¹⁰ Galaty’s comments, written a few decades before Frachetti’s article, emphasizes the continuing difficulty on the part of many scholars to reconcile their settled agriculturalist perspectives with the very different worldviews of their subjects. Understanding the significance of Frachetti’s and Galaty’s observations on mobile pastoralist societies allows some comprehension of how religious development in such a social context might have reflected the influence of the natural environment on the origins of YHWH and Ahura Mazda.