'ŢINUTUL' - UN TAXON REGIONAL TRADITIONAL, SPECIFIC ROMÂNIEI

“Ţinut” – an traditional regional taxon, peculiar to Romania. Having an intense circulation during the past centuries, the term “ţinut” has received in time various connotations, from the geographical spatial taxon one, to the literary, metaphorical one. Hence the ambiguities resulted from its use and the impossibility to decisively impose itself in the regionalization methodology. Its geographical significances are multiple, generally defining a territory varying in size, with a diverse human load, having a visible historical, political-administrative, cultural, or ethnical hallmark. The present analysis sets the concept of “ţinut” as a taxon of lower rank than the “ţară”(land)-type territorial systems, both as extension and as its structural and functional features are concerned. Its equivalence with microregions or with intercommunity associations can offer, in the present stage of the society’s development, a definite statute through a well-determined spatial and functional individualisation.