Publication details
Vlaši na Balkáně. Geneze, historie a kultura minority. Příspěvek k otázce etnokulturní tradice
| Title in English | The Wlakhs in the Balkan Peninsula. Genesis, History and Culture of the Minority. The Contribution to the Question of an Ethnocultural Tradition |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2005 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Ethnologia Europae centralis : časopis pro národopis střední Evropy |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Archaeology, anthropology, ethnology |
| Keywords | Wlahks; Balkan; etnic minority; ethnocultural tradition; folk culture; genesis; history |
| Description | The rest of the autochthonous Romanized Thracian and Romanesque population dating from the beginning of the Christian era has survived in the Balkan Penin-sula up to now. This minority speaking a Romanesque language similar to Romanian includes dispersed crafts-mens communities living in towns and nomadic people without permanent settlement engaged in zonal vertical extensive sheep breeding producing cheese and wool. The Romanesque shepherds were gererally called the Wlakhs, whereas the craftsmen the Aromans. The former formed closed shepherd communities with characteris-tic endogamy. They moved between alpine pastures and seaside lowlands in regular annual cycles and they took with them both sheep and their own families. The authoress presents the most relevant interpretations of the meaning of the Wlakh. She follows the historical transformations of this name defined not only linguistically but also professionally and socially, thus describing the thousand-year-old assimilation process of the Romanesque minority. She compares the Wlakhs with two other ethnic minorities of the Balkan nomadic shepherds, i. e. the Greek-speaking Karakachans and the Yuruks, the muslims of Turkic ethnic origin who moved from Asia Minor. She has ascertained numerous similarities in the way of living and culture between these sole post-medieval nomadic shepherds in Europe. Their specific circular buildings, serving as their temporary family houses, have analogies in the whole Mediterranean region. At the same time, she compares the zonal sheep breeding of these nomadic minorities with the Balkan majorities and finds many similarities, too. The differences were determined by the fact that speep breeding affected the entire life of the nomadic minorities. The preservation of the Wlakh shepherd minority is seen in their semiprivileged statute offering them a choice between the valueof relative personal independence under exceptionally unfavourable living conditionds and the life of a dependent population enjoying permanent residence and settlement on their soils. The interpretation include referen-ces to the Carpathian spepherds called the Wallachians and is conceived as a contribution dealing with cultural ethnicity. |