THE ARCHITECTURAL PHENOMENON IN THE SYSTEM OF THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS
About 150 ancient settlements of different sizes, recorded in the lower reaches of the old delta of the Murgab River in southern Turkmenistan and dated to middle and late Bronze Age, as well as several contemporaneous monuments found in the Amur-Darya regions in northern Afghanistan and southern Uzbekistan, supplied impressive material for the new version of the beginning of the history of architecture in this region of the world. All the settlements found belong to the Bactrian-Margiana archeological complex (BMAK), often also called the Oxis Civilization, and were part of the micro-oases, the so-called noms, according to the Mesopotamian tradition. In some of them there are clear traces of administrative and religious centers, in sharp contrast to the surrounding residential buildings. Archaeologists who discovered and excavated these objects, outlined the vectors of influence and outlined the process of evolution of local construction practices. An attempt was also made to uncover borrowings from the Indus Civilization, Mesopotamia and the Syro-Anatolian world. The degree of penetration of the elements of the BMAK into the ancient and medieval architecture of Iran and Central Asia was clarified. However, there are more questions than answers. The article presents an overview of the structures studied, which makes it possible to see the likely origins of the main architectural and planning principles prevalent in the designated area in the pre-Achaemenid period. The genesis of the BMAC is a debatable topic and so far one can only guess who the bearers of this pre-writing culture were, where they came from, what images served as benchmarks in their construction activities. Albeit, we have a large amount of factual material that is poorly represented in the historiography of the architecture of the Ancient World and must be considered in technical, functional and social aspects. An attempt to outline the contours of such a study, which solves the problems of interpreting the remnants of the monumental architecture, has been made in this article. The originality of the Bactrian-Margiana architecture defines a completely new type of structure, which was not there before. These are “fortresses” whose planning schemes in the form of a square or rectangle with rectangular or round towers at the corners and along the perimeter of the walls, as well as with a circular plan, differ from the earlier Eneolithic structures by the precise construction of geometric forms, by the desire to adhere to the rules of symmetry. Such schemes became most widespread a few centuries later, when other unique forms of BMAK material culture (ceramics, glyptics, small works of plastic art, etc.) were completely forgotten. And only in the architecture of the subsequent epochs - from Eastern Hellenism to Vernacular of the 19th century did the ancient fortification canon continue to be reproduced. All the monuments mentioned in the article clearly indicate the origin of monumentality in the architecture of early agricultural civilizations that turned out to be on the periphery of the ancient Eastern world and did not know any such scale and such geometricism before. This became possible as a result of profound changes in the social life of local communities, which have accumulated material resources and ideological capital for the implementation of unprecedented construction projects. Monumentality as a formal property of elite residences and religious buildings became an expression of a cultural mutation that occurred in the process of incorporating Bactria and Margiana into an extensive network of interregional contacts. The representative architecture of the BMAK was a distinctive innovation at the turn of the III-II millennia BC and left the stage, leaving behind the dead temples, which were replaced by fortified palace buildings. This civilization itself disappeared when the unity of the conditions predetermining its existence was disrupted. The priesthood as a special caste partially lost its former high position, although it clearly introduced the old symbolism and traditions into the successive developmental cycle of the monumental architecture of Central Asia in the early Iron Age and much later.