Gord (archaeology)


A gord is a medieval Slavonic fortified settlement, usually built on strategic sites such as hilltops, riverbanks, lake islets or peninsulas between the 6th and 12th centuries in Central and Eastern Europe. A typical gord consisted of a group of wooden houses surrounded by a wall made of earth and wood, and a palisade running along the top of the bulwark.

Etymology

The term ultimately descends from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root 'enclosure'. The Proto-Slavic word gordъ later differentiated into grad, gorod, gród in Polish, gard in Kashubian, etc. It is the root of various words in modern Slavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced-in areas. It also has evolved into words for a garden in certain languages.
Additionally, it has furnished numerous modern Slavic words for a city or town:
  • Polish gród, plural grody
  • Ancient Pomeranian and modern Kashubian gard
  • Slovak and Czech hrad, or hradisko/hradiště/hradec, which are terms for gord
  • Slovene gradec, grad
  • Belarusian горад
  • Russian город
  • Ukrainian город
  • Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian grad/град
The names of many Central and Eastern European cities harken back to their pasts as gords. Some of them are in countries which once were but no longer are mainly inhabited by Slavic-speaking peoples.
Examples include:
The words in Polish and Slovak for suburbium, podgrodzie and podhradie correspondingly, literally mean a settlement beneath a gord: the gród/''hrad was frequently built at the top of a hill, and the podgrodzie/podhradie at its foot.. The word survives in the names of several villages and town districts, as well as in the names of the German municipalities Puttgarden, Wagria and Putgarten, Rügen.
From this same Proto-Indo-European root come the Germanic word elements *gard and *gart, and likely also the names of Graz, Austria and Gartz, Germany. Cognate to these are English words such as garden, yard, garth, girdle and court.''

Construction

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 on sites that offered particular natural advantages.
As Slavic tribes united to form states, gords were also built for defensive purposes in less-populated border areas. Gords in which rulers resided or that lay on trade routes quickly expanded. Near the gord, or below it in elevation, there formed small communities of servants, merchants, artisans, and others who served the higher-ranked inhabitants of the gord. Each such community was known as a suburbium . Its residents could shelter within the walls of the gord in the event of danger. Eventually the suburbium acquired its own fence or wall. In the High Middle Ages, the gord usually evolved into a castle, citadel or kremlin, and the suburbium into a town.
Some gords did not stand the test of time and were abandoned or destroyed, gradually turning into more or less discernible mounds or rings of earth. Notable archeological sites include Groß Raden in Germany and Biskupin in Poland.

Important gords in Central and Eastern Europe

Austria

Rügen