According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, Rio de Janeiro – 1992 and to the Unesco Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage – 2003, tradition represents an ensemble of concepts, customs and beliefs which historically have their roots in social or national groups and which are transmitted from generation to generation, forming for each social group its specific feature.
Zarnesti town is part of the ethnographic area of „Tara Barsei”, which is close and similar to Bran area.
Regarding the households in the area, they were formed of a patch of land, which was bigger than required for the actual home and outbuildings. On this land was the actual home, an opened shed for agricultural tools and a barn where there was a stable for animals and an area designated for hay and straw. Behind the barn there was a garden for vegetables and an orchard, the manure hole and the toilet.The household was surrounded by a superficial fence to stop the animals to breaking in.
The traditional costume in Zarnesti is simple. But, it has a lot of originality and it is representative. The main components of the male wear are: tight trousers, long and wide shirt, over the shirt a bright colored vest and a black cap with its top folded to the right, traditional flats or boots and more recently officer type boots. In cold weather they wore also a warm wool brown jacket.
The traditional female costume is simple as well: short shirt tight on the waist by a skirt with handmade lace, above which an embroidered apron is folded and around the waist a handmade flourish belt. In winter, married women wear a mantle. This is the local traditional female costume. Unfortunately, in the last decades it has been influenced by other folkloric areas, becoming a hybrid, reported to the male traditional costume.
The grazing history in Piatra Craiului’s region can’t be established with certainty, only deducted. From this perspective it is presumed to be an economic activity which began a long time ago, carried out by the inhabitants of the massif’s neighboring area. Agriculture became a predominant activity in the area assuring a decent living for the inhabitants.
Since the inhabitants of Zarnesti area were paying, from the XVIth Century, taxes from lambs, means that sheep raising was a relatively generalized activity with revenues.
Same as grazing, wood exploitation was mentioned in the first detailed documents on the human communities around Piatra Craiului. It is assumed that the inhabitants of Zarnesti and Tohan villages were exploiting the forests both on the West and East slopes of Piatra Craiului. Precise details for the XVI – XIX Centuries are difficult to obtain.
The occupations of the inhabitants from Bran region derived from the nature of the surrounding environment. Since the relief forms under the Piatra Craiului massif are not suitable for many occupations, the ones that can be carried out are the following: animal breeding; agriculture on small surfaces of plant species which are resistent to harsh weather conditions (potatoes for example), and timber production. It seems that the main occupation was animal breeding. Since the existing data on taxes and official documents refer to the villages from Bran area as a whole, it is difficult to determin the profile and precentage of occupations only for the settlements near Piatra Craiului massif. There is some information on an inhabitant of Magura village who alone had 700 horses and thousands of sheep.
Regarding the house types, in Pestera and Magura villages there are houses with two rooms and one entrance; houses with a porch and the living area; houses with three rooms and median porch; houses with four rooms and more, as well as two storey houses too. As for the materials used for constructions, the wood was mainly used. The houses are built from horizontal beams on a stone brickwork foundation, the newer ones on cement. The beams are carved with a hatchet on two sides or on each side. For the roof, on a large scale, woodshingles were used, but in the present mostly clay tiles are used. The main occupations of the inhabitants are: animal breeding; pastoral product processing; timber exploitation and a recent one is agro-tourism.
The traditional architecture characteristic for Muscel area is relevant for the description of the XVIIth Century Rucar. The houses were built based on the Wallachian custom, from overlapped trunks, with pointed shingle roof, which instead of a chimney had eaves for the smoke. The trunks were interconnected with buckthorn nails. The four sided roof was pointed or flattened. The houses were plastered with white clay. The general house plan included: porch; pantry and the living space. At the end of the XIXth Century two level houses were built: celler and upstairs rooms. The interior design of the houses proves that a textile industry was carried out in which most of the women participated. Custom technical installations functioned, in the interbelic period, on Dambovita river at Valea Cheii and on Rausor. At the end of the XIXth Century at the School of crafts dowry chests were made which competed with the ones made in Brasov. At the weekly Sunday fairs, homemade traditional wear and carpets were sold.
The traditional wear from Rucar impressed through authenticity and beauty many artists, like Nicolae Grigorescu and Nicolae Iorga, who in the work „Privelisti din tara” wrote about a characteristic image from the beginning of the XXth Century. Alexandru Vlahuta also wrote in the work „Romania pitoreasca” about the beauty of the female traditional wear.