Village des Bories is an open-air museum of 20 or so dry stone huts located 1.5 km west of the Provençal village of Gordes, in the Vaucluse department of France. The area was once an outlying district of the village, under the official name of 'Les Savournins', while the grouping of huts were called 'Les Cabanes' in local parlance. Location These huts, which were once agricultural outhouses used on a seasonal basis, stand on a hill at an average altitude of 270–275 metres, between the Sénancole stream – its border to the West – and the Gamache vale – its border to the East, in what the Gordes villagers call the “garrigue” (scrubland) or “montagne” (the hills). Designations In the 1809 land map, the hamlet is referred to as “hameau des Savournins”, a designation which is abridged to “Les Savournins” in the 1956 land map. In local parlance, it was still called “Les cabanes” (the huts) in the late 1970s. Its modern, museological name was coined by Pierre Viala, the site’s discoverer, owner and restorer at the time. The word “Borie” originates from an 18th-century place name – “Les Borrys”, in the Bouches-du-Rhône département – that was mistakenly construed as meaning “dry stone hut” by a mid 19th-century scholar. In the 1809 land register, the dry stone huts are referred to as “cabane” (when intact and still in use) and “sol de cabane” (when deserted and derelict) (see picture representing “Les Savournins Bas“ in the Napoleonic land register). History The emergence of the outlying hamlet of “Les Savournins” dates back to a wide scale campaign of land clearing and cultivation that took place in 18th-century Provence, following a 1766 royal edict. The rush to the hills resulted in masses of stones being extracted from the ground to make way for new fields complete with dry stone walls and huts. The potsherds found in the huts and fields during the restoration work of the 1970s are characteristic of the earthenware manufactured in the Apt, Vaucluse, region in the 18th-19th centuries. Building material The huts were built using locally extracted, 10 to 15 cm-thick, limestone slabs, going by the name of “lauses” or “clapes”. Structure and form Out of the 28 stone buildings still extant on the site, 20 belong to the so-called “Gordoise nave”, i.e. a rectangular or trapezoid edifice in the form of an upturned keel, either free standing or