LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

262 John nandriŞ
the Vlahs exemplify another ethnoarchaeological principle,
that highland zone settlement is not separate from but ineluctably
interpenetrates with centres of lowland power and commerce. highland
zone exploitaton does not take place in some remote and unreal nirvana.
In their social roles these peoples are not “just a bunch of shepherds” as
their detractors seek to make out. they were a crucial social catalyst. In
some areas they were much more important in Mediaeval times than they
are now, for example the Morlachs who have vanished from the Dalmatian
coast, not before transmitting their counting system for sheep in the Vlah
language to the Croatian shepherds who occupied their pastoral niche 46 .
Angus trimble 47 notes that romanian peasants in the nineteenth century
were using a complex counting system of finger gestures analogous to that
used by the romans. “For a farming community counting is more crucial
than reading”. like the counting system transmitted from the Morlachs to
the Croatian shepherds of the Velebit, this merits further examination. It
may represent another example of transmission from the romans; along
with the voluntary acculturation of Dacians to the latin language; or some
among the pastoral beliefs of the Maramureş, which have been so emotively
described by Vasile latiş 48 .
For examples of the roman system:
http://www.files.chem.vt.edu/chem-dept/field/numbers.htm
of the American-Romanian Academy of Arts and Sciences [Davis, California], Vol. 19
(1994) : 74-111.
46 NANdriŞ, j.G., “Ethnoarchaeology and latinity in the mountains of the southern
Velebit”. In: Chapman J et al., eds., “recent Developments in yugoslav Archaeology”.
British Archae ological Reports, International Series, 431 (1988) : 125-255.
47 trIMBle, A., The Finger; a Handbook (yale, 2010).
48 lATiŞ, V., Păstoritul în Munţii Maramureşului; Spaţiu şi Timp (Baia Mare:
Marco & Condor, 1993).