The rest of the land within the village territories is used for pasture by the flocks and herds. Most of this is waste land rocky slopes and bare hill tops - but it usually includes, in dells and valleys, patches of richer watered pasture. Technically, such land is the property of the State, but this provision has almost no practical consequences. Villagers can in fact plough it up and thus in time establish rights to it, if the rest of the village takes no steps to prevent them.
In Sakaltutan, almost all land worth having which was not essential for pasture had already passed into private hands, but there is still occasionally trouble because someone encroaches on fertile village pasture. In Elbashï whose territory is much larger, only in the last few years, with the great increase in cash cropping, had the village combined to prevent members from ploughing land as they wished. In the recent past, only members of the village community, or men with some village connection, were permitted to acquire land by this method, and casual strangers were prevented, informally but effectively, from settling in the village for this purpose, except for refugees (p. 23). This de facto right to take over unuse land was an important addition to the joint rights which the villagers had over their territory. Once this encroachment is permitted, the village as a corporation eventually loses legal control of the land.
Full legal title to land can be established in three ways. A man may be the holder registered in a formal title deed, called a tafu; he may hold tax receipts, showing him to be the owner;