Observaţii privind păstoritul la români
A few remarks about the shepherding to Romanians

Summary/Abstract: The author drew a distinction between the breeding – as a household activity practiced all the year, according to the family’s needs – and the grazing, a temporary manner of breeding, which involves the whole community in the village. As the economy developed towards the large phenomenon of industrialization, the most hardworking members of the community distinguished themselves as “economi de vite” (cattle owners). Romanians grazed their animals in large areas, swinging between summers spent in the mountains and winters spent in the fields, where the climate is softer and near the Danube and the rivers in the plains, where the vegetation is abundant. This swinging between fields and mountains as a “developed manner of grazing” known as “the moving of the flocks” was interpreted by some foreign historians as a kind of nomadic life. Still, there are enough historical, ethnographical and linguistic reasons which prove that grazing (movement of the flocks) was nothing but a mere swing of the flocks accompanied by shepherds in pastoral areas. The moving of the flocks is, actually, a Mediterranean phenomenon and it belongs to the Latins.

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