Les serranos et le pont de Capilla au XVème siècle

Despite a few pioneering studies into transhumant raising in the kingdom of Castile much work in this field has yet to be done. We are acquainted with its general organisation but more rarely with its local manifestations. On the whole we know of the revenues it yielded to the Crown but less of those it delivered to the lords. It was during a lawsuit brought by the Mesta at the end of the fifteenth century against the lord of Capilla, whom it accused of imposing illegal taxes upon the migration of the winter herds across the Capilla bridge on their way to the Extranadura of the south, that a rich documentation was collected by the incriminated party. This documentation holds a twofold interest for us: first it informs us about the region of origin of the animals which followed this migration, the number of herds involved, their composition and their owners and shepherds; second it gives us knowledge of the revenues which a lord could extract from the collection of taxes imposed on the migration, or transhumance, itself.     

AN ETHNOGRAPHER'S TALE: ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH IN NETHERLANDS (WEST) NEW GUINEA (1950 – 1962)1

A major part of the ethnographic literature concerning present-day Irian Jay a is based on research dating back to the 1950s and 1960s. Following the independence of Indonesia, West New Guinea remained a separate Dutch colony between 1950 and 1962. The Dutch colonial administration had had little ethnographic interest in the area since the beginning of the century, so that interest in knowledge concerning the indigenous population had yet to develop. Lack of manpower, finances and time to instigate adequate research meant that the resulting search for ethnographic data became itself a complex social process. People from a range of backgrounds and training - not only academic researchers, but also administrative and missionary personnel - became involved in the gathering of ethnographic material, often while engaged in quite different duties. In this article some light is shed both on the resulting structure of research and on the motivations behind the separate research efforts. At the end of the article some conclusions are drawn concerning the nature of the material gathered.