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Gord (archaeology)

{{short description|Medieval Slavonic fortified settlement}}

{{More citations needed|date=March 2008}}

File:Visualization of Poznań at the end of the 10th century.jpg, Poland at the end of the 10th century]]

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.

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Etymology

File:Góra Birów w Podzamczu - panoramio.jpg, Poland]]

File:Groß Raden.jpg fortified settlement (gord) in Groß Raden, Germany]]

Image:Gorod PL.PNG with names derived from gród (magenta circles)]]

File:Fragment of the Slavic wharf in Gdańsk, 10-12th cent., Nar.Muz.Mor., Gdańsk, Poland.jpg gród bulwarks and wharf in Gdańsk, Poland]]

The term ultimately descends from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root ǵʰortós 'enclosure'. The Proto-Slavic word *gordъ later differentiated into grad (Cyrillic: град), gorod (Cyrillic: город), gród in Polish, gard in Kashubian, etc.{{cite book | last =Taylor | first =Isaac | author-link =Isaac Taylor (canon) | title =Names and Their Histories: A Handbook of Historical Geography and Topographical Nomenclature| publisher =Rivingtons| year =1898| location =Original from the University of Michigan| url =https://archive.org/details/namesandtheirhi01taylgoog| quote =wall Grad gorod.| page =[https://archive.org/details/namesandtheirhi01taylgoog/page/n345 331]}}{{cite book | last =Taylor| first =Isaac| author-link =Isaac Taylor (canon) | title =Words and Places, Or, Etymological Illustrations of History, Ethnology, and Geography| publisher =Macmillan| year =1864| location =Original from Oxford University| url =https://archive.org/details/wordsandplaceso00unkngoog| quote =wall Grad gorod.| page =[https://archive.org/details/wordsandplaceso00unkngoog/page/n166 128]}}{{cite book | last =Anthropologische Gesellschaft in Wien| title =Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien| publisher =F. Berger & Söhne| year =1880| location =Original from the University of Michigan| url =https://archive.org/details/mittheilungende01wiengoog| quote =Gord wall Grad gorod.| page =[https://archive.org/details/mittheilungende01wiengoog/page/n51 40]}} It is the root of various words in modern Slavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced-in areas (Belarusian гарадзіць, Ukrainian городити, Slovak ohradiť, Czech ohradit, Russian оградить, Serbo-Croatian ograditi, and Polish ogradzać, grodzić, to fence off). 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 (toponymic; nowadays a town or city is termed miasto, but remnants of a gród are known as grodzisko)
  • Ancient Pomeranian and modern Kashubian gard
  • Slovak and Czech hrad ("castle" in the modern language), or hradisko/hradiště/hradec, which are terms for gord
  • Slovene gradec, grad ("castle" in modern Slovene)
  • Belarusian {{lang|be|горад}} (horad)
  • Russian {{lang|ru|город}} (gorod)
  • Ukrainian {{lang|uk|город}} (horod, dialectal and toponymic; nowadays misto)
  • Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian grad/{{lang|bg|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 Slavic prefix pod-, meaning "under/below" and descending from the Proto-Indo-European root pṓds, meaning foot, being equivalent to Latin sub-). The word survives in the names of several villages (Podgrodzie, Subcarpathian Voivodeship) and town districts (e.g., that of Olsztyn), as well as in the names of the German municipalities Puttgarden, Wagria and Putgarten, Rügen.

File:Забороли Древнього Києва.jpg gord (so called "Yaroslaviv gord"), Ukraine]]

From this same Proto-Indo-European root come the Germanic word elements *gard and *gart (as in Stuttgart), 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.ON. garðr; goth. gards; den. -gaard; island. -gard; cimb. -garthur; aleman. -gardo; welsh. -gardd; holln. -gaerde; span. -gardin; pomern. -gard; slav. -grod, -hradA Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Oxford. 1911; and Jane Chance, "Tolkien and the invention of myth", [https://books.google.com/books?id=8LLxZXqgJdwC&dq=gar%C3%B0r+gaard+gard&pg=PA70 70] Also cognate but less closely related are Latin hortus, a garden, and its English descendant horticulture. In Hungarian, kert, the word for a garden, literally means encircled. Because Hungarian is a Uralic rather than an Indo-European language, this is likely a loanword. Further afield, in ancient Iran, a fortified wooden settlement was called a gerd, or certa, which also means garden (as in the suffix -certa in the names of various ancient Iranian cities; e.g., Hunoracerta). The Persian word evolved into jerd under later Arab influence. Burugerd or Borujerd is a city in the west of Iran. The Indian suffix -garh, meaning a fort in Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, and other Indo-Iranian languages, appears in many Indian place names.{{cite web|url=http://www.unesco.org/most/p2vidal.htm|title=Urban vocabulary in Northern India – City Words WP No. 4|website=www.unesco.org|access-date=2016-05-09}} Given that both Slavic and Indo-Iranian are sub-branches of Indo-European and that there are numerous similarities between Slavic and Sanskrit vocabulary, it is plausible that garh and gord are related. However, this is strongly contradicted by the phoneme /g/ in Indo-Iranian, which cannot be a reflex of the Indo-European palatovelar /*ǵ/.{{cite web|url=https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/11/01/sanskrit_and_russian_ancient_kinship_39451|title=Sanskrit and Russian: Ancient kinship|website=Russia Beyond|access-date=2016-05-09}}

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 (literally "undercity") ({{langx|pl|podgrodzie}}). 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 (Russian gorodishche, Polish gród or grodzisko, Ukrainian horodyshche, Slovak hradisko, Czech hradiště, German Hradisch, Hungarian hradis and Serbian gradiška/градишка). Notable archeological sites include Groß Raden in Germany and Biskupin in Poland.

Important gords in Central and Eastern Europe

=== Austria ===

= Belarus =

= Czech Republic =

= Germany =

== Rügen ==

== Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ==

== Berlin-Brandenburg ==

== Saxony-Anhalt ==

== Schleswig-Holstein ==

  • {{Interlanguage link|List of Early Middle Ages castles in Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein|de|3=Liste frühmittelalterlicher Burganlagen in Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein}} including:
  • the fort of the Slavic settlement of Starigard in present-day Oldenburg – {{Interlanguage link|Oldenburger Wall|de}}

== Bavaria ==

= Poland =

==Kociewie==

File:Owidz, grodzisko (12).JPG, Kociewie]]

==Silesia==

=== Russia ===

= Slovakia =

= Ukraine =

See also

References

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External links

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  • [http://archeologia.w.toruniu.pl/grzybowo/rekonstr/rekonstr.htm Reconstruction of a gród at Grzybowo, Poland] – images of a typical ancient Slavic settlement with suburbium, earth-and-wood wall and moat; by Tomek Birezowski (Polish text)

{{Fortifications}}

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Category:Fortifications by type

Category:Early Slavic archaeology

Category:Slavic history

Category:Slavic architecture

Category:Archaeology of Poland

Category:Human habitats

Category:Gords