3.1 TERRITORY OF LASOVIAKS RESIDENCE - GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT

            Lasowiacy or Lesiacy is an ethnographic group inhabiting the areas of the Sandomierz Forest, and more specifically the area at the confluence of the Vistula and San rivers, and is part of the Sandomierz Basin. This area borders to the south with the Carpathian sill, from the north-west it borders on the Małopolska Upland and from the north-east with Roztocze. Currently, this area includes the following poviats: leżajski, kolbuszowski, niski, stalowowolski, mielecki, tarnobrzeski, and a part of ropczycko-sędziszowski.

            The area in question has rather poor soils: no soil of classes I and II, and class III occurs only in a few areas (Leżajsk area - podzolic soils made of clay sands, in part of the Kolbuszowa Plateau, along the beds of larger rivers - narrow belts of heavy ewe).

Even in the fourteenth century, almost the entire area between the Vistula, San and Wisłoka was covered with dense forest. They were mixed forests with pine, spruce, fir, beech, sycamore and maple trees. Due to the fact that mixed forests occupied better soil, they were quickly cut down for cultivation. Surrounded by swamps, the forest, inaccessible to humans, gave shelter to numerous game and marsh birds. For this reason, it was bypassed by the main trade routes running along the Bug valley and along the Carpathian Foothills.

            The name "Sandomierz Forest" was justified in the nineteenth century. It was uniform, compact with the remaining large stretches of forests. Unfortunately, the five-century settlement process and industrial exploitation have irretrievably changed the original landscape of the forest. Most of the wooded areas of forests still survive in sands and marshy areas. The largest forest complexes cover a part of the tarnobrzeski, niski and kolbuszowa poviats.

            The most precise representation of the range of specific features of the Lasowiaks folk culture is the map developed by Franciszek Kotula, where the borders of this sub-region have the features of a transitional sphere, and the entire area corresponds to the state existing in the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century.

SOURCES:

Fudyna J., Lasowiacy. Wiejski dom mieszkalny w widłach Wisły i Sanu. Forma i Funkcja, Mielec 2014

Ruszel K., Lasowiacy, Rzeszów 1994