DISTINCTIONS AND DESIGN FEATURES OF THE HAYSTACK IN THE CARPATHIANS (END OF XIX – THE MIDDLE OF XX CENTURY): CULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The article presents the cultural and environmental analysis of the haystack: it is the most common construction for the storage of hay in the Carpathian region. The authors, based on their field materials, archival and literary ethnographic sources, analyzed: the widening of this construction in the studied area, its design features and the process of cultural adaptation of different parts of the haystack to the climatic conditions, the characteristics of the grass, wild and domestic herbivores. The number of the stack on the map of the Carpathians and its operational significance indicate that it can be considered as one of the markers of the East-Carpathian macro-region on the border with the West-Carpathian region. The researchers found out that despite its constructive primitiveness, the haystack morphology has different variations which are caused as with diversity of different areas natural conditions and altitudinal zonal niches, as well as the action of the law of poly-linearity of adaptive evolution, which suggests the possibility of diverse adaptation ways in similar environmental conditions. The researchers noted that where the impact factor acts intensively, or its population occupies a wide range of ecological niches, in the evolution process a combination of different adaptation techniques was revealed. On the example of the haystack, other laws of the cultural ecology were developed, including the rule of crosscultural adaptation. A striking illustration of this rule is a stack on piles in the Southern Carpathians; pails on wet grass meadows keep hay from moisture, on even dry grounds they protect the hay from eating it with wild herbivores, on the hills level the platform, in the courtyards, the place under the platform is used as beans.