"We followed signs -- a knotted wishbone to turn left, a broken twig for a right fork in the road, a white cloth for a friendly farmhouse where we could water Red (the horse) and fill our canteens." Zoli at 29.
Runic signs. Look them up at ://www.symbols.com/index/wordindex-r.html. They appear in Germanic, Celtic and Slavic cultures. See ://www.zielarze.pl/runes.htm. "The Cambridge Ancient History," book by Alan K. Bowman, Peter Garnsey, and Averil Cameron, is online as an ebook. I did a search for runic signs and the book came up. It says the signs originated about the second century, spread, show connections to various cultures, used probably first as invocations, to increase efficacy of a weapon, for example; but also the kind of wood inscribed was significant - birch for fertility, or the rune for the now-extinct auroch, for strength.
Do an images search for rune signs or runic signs to see them.
While traveling, a band of Gypsies:
"...maintained contact with other convoys of the same clan moving along separate routes. They would leave signs at crossroads - a bunch of twigs tied with a red rag, a branch brokein in a particular way, a notched bone - the signs called shpera* among the Polish Gypsies (and patrin,** or leaf, everywhere else, from Kosovo to Peterborough. Fearing the devil's spawn, villagers steered clear of these markers."
Fair use quote from "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, NY Vintage 1996 at 3.
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* Shpera - road sign or marking, see Roma-English glossary at www2.arnes.si/~eusmith/Romany/glossary.
** Patrin - marker, leaf, see "The Patrin Web Journal, Romani Culture and History" at www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=patrin, and the meaning of "patrin" as "leaf," and further linguistic offshoots at www.languagehat.com/archives/001314.php
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