The katun (Albanian: Katun(d); Aromanian: Cãtun; Romanian: Cătun; Serbian: Катун) is a rural self-governing community in the Balkans, traditional of the living style of Albanians, Vlachs (in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia), as well as some Slavic communities of hill people. Traditionally, a katun is based on strong kinship ties and the practice of a closed farming economy based on stockbreeding, constantly moving to find pasture.[1] The community based its organizational, political and economic activities on the decisions of a council of elders or a senior member appointed as its leader. The Albanian communities strictly followed the Kanun, their traditional customary law that has directed all the aspects of their kinship-based society.[1]
This form of association of people resulted from the absence of strong central government. Particularly autonomous katuns are observed in documents from the second half of the 14th and 15th centuries.[2] Usually it is described as "mountainous landscape with pastures where people lived temporarily with cattle and where they lived only during the summer in huts".[3] However, this description is more in line with today's distinct form of nomadic pastoralism called transhumance, whereas in the medieval times it had socio-political dimension, and significance in social and state affairs.[4]