Dem wandel auf der Spur

bauen und wohnen in Monjukli Depe und Umgebung, Turkmenistan

Heit, Ilia

The first communities of farmers and herders appeared in the Kopet Dag foothills of southern Turkmenistan at the end of the 7th millennium BCE, heralding a long history of village life and mud-brick construction. This book uses architectural and other archaeological evidence to examine the practices of building and dwelling of the early farmers of Central Asia. With a diachronic approach and a focus on the temporality of building and dwelling practices, the author illuminates both the changes and continuities over remarkably long periods of time in the way living space was arranged and used.
The analysis is conducted on two levels. On the microscale, I. Heit examines the history of construction and use of individual houses in Monjukli Depe. This site, which was occupied in the Neolithic and early Aeneolithic, was excavated from 2010 to 2014 by a team from the Freie Universität Berlin. In the analysis underlying this book, particular attention is paid to the life cycles of the houses, from their construction and use to their abandonment and re-use. The individual house histories offer a differentiated picture of the use of space in the Aeneolithic village but also show many similarities that indicate shared ideas of house construction, living and the ways of dealing with house ruins.
On the macroscale, the author examines the development of built space over a period from 6200–2700 cal BCE. The analysis of the extensively excavated Neolithic and Aeneolithic sites of the Kopet Dag foreland reveals long-term developments in the spatial organization of village settlements. These results are compared with previous narratives of societal development in Central Asia and contribute to a deeper understanding of continuities and changes in prehistoric lifestyles there.