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.
22-594: In Polish, grodzisko means a mound or ring of earth remaining on the site of a former gord ( gród ), or fortified settlement. Grodzisko may also refer to any of the following places: Gord (archaeology) 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. It
44-447: A city or town : 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
66-649: A stakewall or a paling , is typically a row of closely placed, high vertical standing tree trunks or wooden or iron stakes used as a fence for enclosure or as a defensive wall . Palisades can form a stockade . Palisade derives from pale , from the Latin word pālus , meaning stake, specifically when used side by side to create a wood defensive wall. (see 'pale' , English: Etymology 2 on Wiktionary). Typical construction consisted of small or mid-sized tree trunks aligned vertically, with as little free space in between as possible. The trunks were sharpened or pointed at
88-540: 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
110-480: 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
132-762: A large enough gap in which to enter. In contrast, the Romans used smaller and easier to carry stakes which were placed closer together, making them more difficult to uproot. The Iroquoian peoples, who coalesced as tribes around the Great Lakes, often defended their settlements with palisades. Within the palisades the peoples lived in communal groups in numerous longhouses, sometimes in communities as large as 2,000 people. Archeological evidence of such palisades has been found at numerous 15th and 16th-century sites in both Ontario, Canada, and in New York, United States. Many settlements of
154-629: A palisade would be constructed around a castle as a temporary wall until a permanent stone wall could be erected. Both the Greeks and Romans created palisades to protect their military camps. The Roman historian Livy describes the Greek method as being inferior to that of the Romans during the Second Macedonian War . The Greek stakes were too large to be easily carried and were spaced too far apart. This made it easy for enemies to uproot them and create
176-421: A variety of reasons such as protecting a strategically valuable area or a town Some palankas evolved into larger settlements. In the late nineteenth century, when milled lumber was not available or practical, many Adirondack buildings were built using a palisade architecture. The walls were made of vertical half timbers; the outside, rounded half with its bark still on faced Adirondack weather, while
198-449: 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. 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
220-514: Is strongly contradicted by the phoneme /g/ in Indo-Iranian, which cannot be a reflex of the Indo-European palatovelar /*ǵ/. 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
242-411: Is the root of various words in modern Slavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced-in areas (Belarusian гарадз іць, Ukrainian horod yty, Slovak o hrad iť, Czech o hrad it, Russian o grad it, Serbo-Croatian o grad iti, and Polish o grad zać, grod zić, to fence off). It also has evolved into words for a garden in certain languages. Additionally, it has furnished numerous modern Slavic words for
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#1732847656489264-770: 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. Palisade A palisade , sometimes called
286-843: The Nodena sites in northeastern Arkansas , and the Etowah site in Georgia . Palisaded settlements were common in Colonial North America, for protection against indigenous peoples and wild animals. The English settlements in Jamestown, Virginia (1607), Cupids, Newfoundland (1610) and Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620) were all originally fortifications that were surrounded by palisades. Such defensive palisades were also frequently used in New France . In addition, colonial architecture used vertical palings as
308-640: The native Mississippian culture of the Midwestern United States used palisades. A prominent example is the Cahokia Mounds site in Collinsville, Illinois . A wooden stockade with a series of watchtowers or bastions at regular intervals formed a three-kilometre-long (2 mi) enclosure around Monk's Mound and the Grand Plaza. Archaeologists found evidence of the stockade during excavation of
330-564: The German municipalities Puttgarden , Wagria and Putgarten , Rügen . 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. Also cognate but less closely related are Latin hortus ,
352-652: The area and indications that it was rebuilt several times, in slightly different locations. The stockade seems to have separated Cahokia's main ceremonial precinct from other parts of the city, as well as being a defensive structure. Other examples include the Angel Mounds site in southern Indiana , Aztalan State Park in Wisconsin , the Kincaid site in Illinois , the Parkin site and
374-407: 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") ( 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
396-404: The inside half was sanded and varnished for a finished wood look. Typically, the cracks between the vertical logs were filled with moss and sometimes covered with small sticks. Inside, the cracks were covered with narrow wooden battens. This palisade style was much more efficient to build than the traditional horizontal log cabin, since two half logs provided more surface area than one whole log and
418-689: The top, and were driven into the ground and sometimes reinforced with additional construction. The height of a palisade ranged from around a metre to as high as 3–4 m. As a defensive structure, palisades were often used in conjunction with earthworks . Palisades were an excellent option for small forts or other hastily constructed fortifications. Since they were made of wood, they could often be quickly and easily built from readily available materials. They proved to be effective protection for short-term conflicts and were an effective deterrent against small forces. However, because they were wooden constructions they were also vulnerable to fire and siege weapons. Often,
440-653: The vertical alignment meant a stronger structure for supporting loads like upper stories and roofs. It also presented a more finished look inside. Examples of this architectural style can still be found in the Adirondacks, such as around Big Moose Lake . In areas with extremely high rates of violent crime and property theft, a common means to prevent crime is for residential houses to be protected by perimeter defenses such as ornamental iron bars, brick walls, steel palisade fences, wooden palisade fences and electrified palisade fences ( railings ). The City of Johannesburg promotes
462-700: The walls of houses, in what was called poteaux en terre construction. Some 18th-century houses in this style survive in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri , initially settled by French colonists from the Illinois Country to the east of the Mississippi River . A "palanka" was a type of wooden fort constructed of palisades, built by the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans during the 16th and 17th centuries. They could be erected for
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#1732847656489484-473: 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
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