E-mail: annaplotn@mail.ru Tel.: +7 (495) 938-17-80 32a, Leninskiy av., Moscow, 119334, Russian Federation
Grand PhD (Philology), chief researcher, Institute for Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Science
This study is financially supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 17–18–01 373 “Slavic archaic zones in the space of Europe: ethnolinguistic studies”.
The article is based on the author’s fi eld materials of 1998, which have not yet been studied and published. The work shows that the tradition of the Serbian-Macedonian borderland can serve as a representative of the archaic Balkan Slavic area in the «ethnographic present» (XIX — XXI centuries). Ethnolinguistic information from the village of Yablanica in the region of Pčinja are compared with neighboring Northern-Macedonian and Central-Western -Bulgarian traditions as far as with Eastern-Serbian data obtained from published sources and the Kosovo archive, and those available to the author, who had repeatedly visited diff erent villages in the northern part of Eastern Serbia (in Leskovac, Moravica, Pirot districts). The researcher focuses on the ethno-cultural features of the rural tradition, mainly that of folk calendar and agricultural rituals. Christmas and new year ritual complex, Shrovetide and pre-Easter customs, occasional rite of rain summoning, spring-summer and other rituals are considered. The article shows that the material under consideration characterizes a kind of intersection of the South-East Serbian, Macedonian and West Bulgarian traditions, where compact areas of phenomena of traditional folk culture are observed. As a result of the comparative analysis, a number of features have been revealed, according to which the region fi ts into a larger Southern Serbian-Macedonian area, oft en called the Central Balkan Slavi
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