Gord (Slavic settlement)

A gord is a medieval Slavonic fortified wooden settlement, sometimes known as a burgwall (or Slavic burgwall) after the German term for such sites. Gords were built during the late Bronze and early Iron Ages by the Lusatian culture (c. 1300–500 BCE, and later in the 8th–7th centuries BCE, in what are now Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, eastern Germany, and India. 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 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 (Polish: 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 usual evolved into a castle or citadel (kremlin) and the suburbium into a town.

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