BUILDING MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION METHODS

Clay (pakhsa and bricks)

Early BMAC buildings were erected either with pakhsa (beaten earth), for example, at Kelleli 6, or, more often, with molded sun-dried mudbricks of rectangular shape (proportions 1:2:4 ^or 9-12. x 18-28 x 42-58 cm) weighing up to 25 kg. The bricks were used for the construction of both small household structures, and public and monumental complexes, including long perimeter walls. They are nearly the same everywhere. The earliest use of square bricks (24 x 24 x 10 cm) has been identified at Namazga Depe in NMG VI layers (Late Bronze), as well as at Kelleli 4 (22 x 22 x 10-12 cm) and Altyn Depe.

Baked bricks are extremely rare and used only as isolated elements: for floor pavement, for lining underfloor waste water(?) channels, or for double rows in perimeter walls. Such baked bricks have been found at Kelleli 3, Adji Kui 1, and Gonur 1, and many of them are of very high quality (Orazov 2016). Some of them, with a straw temper, have a specific format (46 x 21 x 12 cm), others (34 x 17 x 6.5 cm) are made of pure clay with a glossy surface.

Sun-dried mudbricks as a construction material are known in Central Asia since the Neolithic Djeitun culture. At that time, however, they looked more like “clay loaves” than distinctly shaped bricks, except at Chagylly Depe where rectangular examples are attested. Due to their technical properties, and most importantly, to their easy production with local loess, mudbricks are extremely popular all over the arid zone and are still used today in rural areas. Their production process has remained almost unchanged for millennia. In most cases, the clay/loess is first washed and then soaked into a pit where chopped straw or yandaq (camel thorn) is added to improve the quality of the bricks. The mixed clay is then poured into special wooden bottomless molds lying on the ground and the bricks are ready the next day. To build the walls a clay mortar is used to bind the bricks.

The floors and walls of the living places were coated with a mixture of clay and straw, often renewed as shown by the numerous layers found in the excavations. Often doorways have brick steps and, in some cases, are associated with stone doorsockets. The walls of adjacent rooms were usually bonded rather than built one against the other, a fact that points at the existence of a general plan before the construction started. The roofs of the buildings were flat, made of horizontal beamsresting on the walls. The beams were covered with a thick layer of reeds, coated with clay. This system is still used today.

Gypsum (“ganch”)/alabaster

Gypsum was used only for the finishing of specific places at some buildings in Bactria and Margiana. At Togolok 21, gypsum totally covered the walls and floors of several rooms that are supposed to be those where the haoma beverage was made. This has led researchers to consider this complex as a “temple.”

In the Dashly 3 palace, fragments of alabaster mosaic were found in the grilled-plan area for storage, and were probably intended for the decoration of the walls of special rooms or places (Sarianidi 1977a: 43; see also Chapter 11).

Vaults

Due to the presence of square rooms, or of the round altars at Togolok 21, some authors (Mamedov 2003: m) have considered the possibility of domed roofs, but no proof for them has yet been found. There are, however, examples of “false vaults” (i.e., when parallel rows of bricks are laid successively with a gradual progression until they make a vault). This is often the case for pottery kilns at Namazga Depe (Pugachenkova 1958: 219-220; Baimatowa 2008: 144-148), Khapuz Depe, Ulug Depe, etc.

It is also the case for the exterior “corridor rooms” of the “palace” at Dashly 3. As these corridors are T-shaped, one has to assume that the builders knew how to deal with the binding of the two domes. Similar false vaults are said to have covered the corridor around the interior courtyard of Togolok 21 (Mamedov 2003: 114).

It has also been argued that domes made of brick rings covered the round towers at Togolok 21, Gonur South, Dashly 1, or the Dzharkutan temple (Huff 2001: 188-190). It is not excluded that such domes, after collapse, were partially replaced with flat wooden roofs.

Finally, some of the burial cist-like brick structures can be reconstructed with a vaulted roof at Gonur Depe and Adji Kui. The vault was made of three to five bricks with a special trapezoidal one as the key at the top. Large fragments of pottery were also added between the bricks, to increase the structural strength of the whole construction (Orazov 2016: 225).

The Gonur Depe chamber tombs are smaller copies of real houses, except for the presence of an entrance hall (Sarianidi 2002b: 22). The two chambers usually followed a 1:2 proportion and were constructed of sun-dried mudbricks (10-12 x 22-24/20-24 x 42-44/42-45-48 cm). None of them is totally preserved, but remains of fallen brick vaults have been found in all of them. The roof-cover of the hypogea is unknown.

Wood

During the excavations at the Gonur North palace, fragments of wooden beams that had fallen from the ceiling were discovered on the floor, especially along the whole length of the fortress corridor and at the entrance of the towers where they were probably used as lintels (Artemiev and Urmanova 2.010).

Doors, attested by the presence of stone door-sockets, were probably made of wood. Due to the position of the door-socket, the door was usually placed inside the rooms so that the wooden panels had to be much larger than the doorways themselves. In order to close the gap between the wall, the door panel, and the doorstep, semicircular clay moldings were applied on the walls, as shown at Adji Kui 1. The average height for the doorways was ca.1.50 m, but reached 1.70 m at the Gonur South Temenos. Generally, compared to the low reduced height of other areas doorways during the Early Bronze Age, like at Altyn Depe (only 65-70 cm, see Berezkin 2001: 50-51), those of the BMAC buildings are higher (Mamedov 2003: 112).

Finally, there is some evidence for the use of wooden columns supporting roofs, as shown on the floors in some of the Gonur North palace rooms and multicolumn halls may have existed.