Oral History of Rural Life and Livestock in Herrera de Alcántara

Álvarez Pérez, Xosé Afonso coordinated this oral history dataset documenting rural life in Herrera de Alcántara. The description details pastoralism, labor contracts, livestock breeds like the Merino sheep exported to Australia, and the socioeconomic structure of small landholdings versus large estates. The dataset was last updated on May 5, 2024, via the e-cienciaDatos Harvested Dataverse platform.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical labor practices based on descriptions of contracts made 'from San Pedro to San Pedro' and payments in kind.
• Studying the history of animal husbandry based on mentions of Merino sheep, milking, cheese-making, and specific shepherd naming conventions.
• Researching land tenure and social structure based on contrasts between small 'jurisdictions' and large estates, and land grants from the Church or Franco.

Strengths

• Provides a detailed qualitative description of rural socioeconomic structures and agricultural practices.
• Contains specific historical claims, such as the origin of Australian Merino sheep from Herrera.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Álvarez Pérez, Xosé Afonso (coord.), e-cienciaDatos Harvested Dataverse

Collection Method

Likely contains transcribed oral history interviews or compiled ethnographic notes.

Time Range

The description references historical figures and practices, suggesting a 20th-century focus, but no explicit date range is provided.

Freshness

Last updated 2024-05-05 04:06:34; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Herrera de Alcántara, Spain.