Traditional Mentality and Culture in the South-West of Romania

In the present work, it was intended an incursion into the past of the village from the south-west of Romania, emphasising few of the intangible cultural heritage elements, from the perspective of the ethnographic and cultural anthropology research. Our attention was paid to the Oltenia, the Danube Gorge area and the south of Banat will be the subject of a future study.The work is structured in four chapters (I. A short digression on the romanian village; II. From the cycle of the winter holidays; III. Family life habits. Collective mentalities and customary practices; IV. The destiny seen in the traditional man’s system of representations) and several subchapters, with an Foreword and Conclusions. It is focused, as the title indicates, on the traditional culture and mentality. It attempts a journey in time, in the effort to identify and analyse some of the living aspects, as they were understood by the traditional societies. Simultaneously, the presentation of some ancient beliefs, practices, customs, yet found in the local collective memory, aligns with the safeguarding and the preservation of the experience enjoyed by long-gone people.