Culture and housing – in the Romanian village and in the Homeric tradition

The spatial dimension is not just one of the coordinates of cultural development, but rather a condition for its manifestation. This is easily seen in the analysis of family culture. By researching sociological and ethnographic data related to the organization and functioning of the traditional Romanian family in rural spaces, the article interprets these data in order to restore the importance of physical, natural, and material references in understanding the cultural formula of the family. Even though they have been treated more from an economic perspective, these references carry and generate visions of the world and life. The research into the composition of the family household, both at the level of forms and architecture as well as at the level of materials used, reveals a mode of human social life that extends and does not separate itself from nature. Additionally, it represents an organizational method that, by specializing in space, can maintain its continuity at universal dimensions. This process does not arise from a historical perfection of construction forms but from the initial stages of these forms that have become matrices surviving into contemporary Romanian family tradition. The study of this reality is complemented by its comparison with the Homeric household, which, in an interpretation of its material forms, closely resembles the Romanian model.