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Talking Trees: Basque Sheepherder Arborglyphs, Abstract

Joxe Mallea, Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno

Historians are used to digging in archives, but the idea of having to go into the mountains and get primary information from reading trees, is totally alien. Yet, there are hundreds of aspen groves in the American West that contain precise, localized, and unpublished ethnohistoric sources regarding the sheep industry in the last century. The arborglyphs are an autobiographical monument to the history of the common man, the Basque sheepherders, who actually did most of the sheepherding work.

Email: mallea@scsr.nevada.edu

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