ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE OF KHELVACHAURI MUNICIPALITY (GONIO FORTRESS)

Abstract

Gonio Fortress is an important historical, architectural and archeological site in Khelva-chauri Municipality. Its past is reflected in Greek-Latin-Georgian literary sources and in epigraphic evidences. Gonio Fortress is still the object of intensive archeological research.

Gonio is identified with the Apsaros-Apsarunt mentioned in the Classical and Byzantine sources. It is clear from the archaeological data that the settlement existed here long be­fo­re the construction of the fort. The oldest archaeological material found in the Gonio area dates back to the Early Iron Age. A mining and metallurgical center dated to the 8th-7th centuries BC was functioning in the surroundings of Apsaros. Recent discoveries confirm that this territory was inhabited in the Classical Antiquity as well. The graves of the locals of the 5th century BC were unearthed at the south gate of the fort. Economic-cultural life had been on the rise since the Hellenistic period. Evi­dence of this is the ceramic and numismatic material found in the Fortress and the surrounding area.

Apsaros, as a fortress was first referred to in the work dated to AD 77. It is not excluded that the Romans built a temporary wooden fortress in Apsaros. The construction of the stone circuit wall seems to have begun at the turn of the 1st-2nd centuries. The bath, water supply and sewage systems, ruins of barracks at the south of the gate, household areas in the south-west part of the fort, the remains of the principia in the central part are dated to the 2nd-3rd centuries AD.

Apsaros was transformed into a boarder fort from the second half of the 3rd century AD. Apsaros fortress temporarily ceased to function by the 4th century AD. Archaeological material reveals that from the middle of the 4th century AD including the first half of the 6th century AD the fort was actually abandoned.

After the 8th century AD Apsaros is not mentioned in the written sources. In the era of the strength of Georgian Kingdom, the name "Gonia" takes its place. The study of the fortress’ surroundings did not reveal any cultural deposits of the Middle Ages. It indicates that Gonio fortress had lost its former significance and the territory of the fortress was less used.

In the King Tamar’s epoch Gonia became part of the Trabzon Empire. In the 1290s the province of Rize-Gonia separated from Trabzon Empire and joined the Kingdom of Georgia. In 1547, the Ottomans conquered Chaneti and later the ‘small town of Gonia’. They repaired the fortress, built battlements and walkways on the walls, renewed the water supply system, built hammam on the ruins of the Roman bath and a mosque in the middle of the fortress. The Ottomans turned Gonio Fortress into an outpost to control the conquered lands and annex West Georgia. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, according to the resolution of the Congress of Berlin of 1878, Gonio was returned to Georgia together with other territories.