End of the Trail: Last Shepherds of Roncal in the Mountains of Nevada (USA)

Abstract

The project presented here was directed to research and investigate the ethnography of Roncal people that lived the phenomenon of the emigration to USA in the state of Nevada. The final work will set out, in a comparative manner, the development of the acculturation process in those human communities that arrived to work like shepherds and finally settled over there. Ethnographic fieldwork and bibliographic checking showed modifications of social rituals as a result of contact between two different cultures. On the one hand the new cross-border relationships have created changes in the traditional identifications of the concept of membership inside an ethnic or peer group and particularly what those changes meant. But on the other hand, by means of historical ethnology, is achieved to comprise the reason by which the territory of Nevada turned into one of the main enclaves of settlement of the Basque community in the North American West. These border meetings and practices interpret the concept of limit and identify itself with the same local culture located on either side of the mountains. The economic and cultural transformations become in its community bosom, will be interpret like the point of departure for this reflection stems from the question of how critically review their social limit and acculturation.