Gord (archaeology)

Gord (archaeology)

A gord is a medieval Slavic fortified settlement, also occasionally known as a burgwall or Slavic burgwall after the German name for these sites. The ancient peoples were known for building wooden fortified settlements. The reconstructed Centum-satem isogloss word for such a settlement is g'herdh, gordъ, related to the Germanic *gard and *gart (as in Stuttgart etc.). This Proto-Slavic word (*gordъ) for town or city, later differentiated into grad (Cyrillic: град), gard, gorod (Cyrillic: город), etc. The most explicit derivatives from grad are the Croatian word Gradjanski (Croatian: Građanski) and the Russian word Grazhdanye (Russian: Граждане) both means citizens.

Similar strongholds were built during the late Bronze and early Iron Ages by the people of the Lusatian culture (ca. 1300 BC – 500 BC), and later in the 7th - 8th centuries CE in modern-day Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and eastern Germany. These settlements were usually founded on strategic sites such as hills, riverbanks, lake islands or peninsulas.

A typical gord was a group of wooden houses, built either in rows or in circles, surrounded by one or more rings of walls made of earth and wood, a palisade and/or moats. Some gords were ring-shaped, with a round, oval or occasionally polygonal fence or wall surrounding a hollow. Others, built on a natural hill or a man-made mound, were cone-shaped. Those with a natural defense on one side, such as a river or lake, were usually horseshoe-shaped.

Most gords were built in densely-populated areas, and situated in places which presented particular natural advantages. However, as Slavic tribes united into states, gords were also built for defense purposes in less populated border areas.

Those gords which served as a ruler's residence or lay on trade routes, quickly expanded. A suburbium (Polish: podgrodzie) formed near or below the gord. Its population served the residents of the gord and could shelter within the gord's walls in the event of danger. Eventually the suburbium would have its own fence or wall. In the High Middle Ages, the gord would normally evolve into a castle or citadel (kremlin); the suburbium – into a town.

Some other gords, which did not stand the test of time and were abandoned or destroyed, gradually turned into more or less discernible mounds or rings of earth (known in Russian as gorodische, in Polish as grodzisko, in Ukrainian as horodyshche, in Slovak as hradisko and in Czech as hradiště). Notable archeological sites include Biskupin, Poland and Bilsk, Ukraine (see Gelonus).