Earlier today, I got caught up in an email exchange with Christian Kirsch, the author of this German blog post about using absolute references in the new Numbers '08. The blog post shows that attempting to refer to full range in absolute terms (=SUM($A$1:$A$10), for instance) fails in Numbers. When the blog author tried to enter the formula, Numbers converted it to =SUM('$A$1:$A$'10'), and that formula definitely doesn't work.
When I tried it on my system, however, it worked exactly as expected. After some back and forth emails with Christian, we figured out a solution: using the International System Preferences panel, set the number format to US instead of German. As soon as Christian made this change, Numbers worked as expected. We're not certain if this issue affects more than just Germany, but if you're having trouble with absolute ranges in Numbers, it might be worth checking your number format.
I hope this will be addressed in an upcoming update from Apple.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070809201711328