Teren în Munții Orăștiei. Rituri de trecere în comuna Orăștioara de Sus
In the Orăștie Mountains – a field research rites of passage at Orăștioara de Sus

Summary/Abstract: The rites of passage, referring to birth, wedding or death represented in the course of human development the actions that aim to certify the social order, but also to legitimate o certain cosmic order. Symbols of joining, mechanisms of motivation and mobilization, and the consensus on the moral values that lie at the bottom of the existence of a community might be found out from these rites.Orțișoara de Sus is located in the eastern side of Hunedoara County, at the foot of the Șurianu Mountains partly and partly within these mountains; the Grădiștea River makes its central axis. From this point of view, it is a similar village both to the other ones in the high areas of Hunedoara County and of the whole country. Not an economic or social note comes in turn to individualize the village, but a cultural one: the territory of the village is almost congruent with the area of the capital of the Dacian Kingdom during our aboriginal ancestors’ time of glory. Costești, Blidaru and Fețele Albe, the three great fortresses around Sarmizegetusa Regia, together with the enclosure like, formed by that one at Piatra Albă (Luncani Platform) and Căpâna, on the Sebeș Valley, the most distant one, made these mountains be the cradle of the Romanian people.A monographic approach lies at the bottom of my methodological steps, joining the participatory action research and the semi-directed interview. There was registered and organized a large volume of ethnographical data at the village of Orțișoara de Sus, Hunedoara County, during the three years of field research there. A series of latent, traditional senses, essentially magical and metaphysical, might be put in light off now, without a hermeneutic analyze of these data.

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