Sarskoye Gorodishche
Coordinates: 57°4.463′N 39°17.334′E / 57.074383°N 39.288900°E
Sarskoye Gorodishche or Sarsky fort (Russian: Сарское городище, literally "Citadel on the Sara") was a medieval fortified settlement in the Yaroslavl Oblast of Russia. It was situated on the bank of the Sara River, a short distance from Lake Nero, to the south of modern Rostov, of which it seems to have been the early medieval predecessor.
The site first attracted the attention of Russian archaeologists in the mid-19th century by its imposing dimensions which have no parallels in the region. Excavations begun by Count Aleksey Uvarov in 1854 revealed a number of superb Varangian objects comparable to the sites in Scandinavia, notably a Carolingian sword with the inscription "Lun fecit". Excavations have been undertaken intermittently since that period by many persons, including Nicholas Roerich in 1903. In his diary, Roerich complained that the site had been reduced drastically by road builders.
After Soviet archaeologists resumed excavations, they rejected the traditional attribution of the site to the Norsemen, proclaiming it the largest centre (perhaps the capital) of the Merya, a Finnic tribe which inhabited the region prior to the arrival of the Slavs. According to the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, the Merya township goes back to the 6th century, but its fortifications were constructed by the Slavs in the 10th century. The settlement suffered a decline in the late 10th century but seems to have endured until the 13th century, when it is first mentioned in a major chronicle as "Sarskoe Gorodishche".
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