The shepherd’s trade is one of the world’s oldest professions. In Provence, it might well seem a timeless vocation, seeing how completely its practice in Crau and the mountains has permeated their inhabitants’ collective memory.
There are traces of it throughout the areas in question: the sheepfolds in Crau and Camargue, the bories (stone huts) on the hills and low-lying massifs, and the piles of scree, irrigation channels (known as bélières), remains of barns and pastoral huts in the Southern Alps.