ABSTRACT
Archeological research of recent years in southern Turkmenistan has led to the discovery of protourban centers existing there at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennia B.C., whose establishment was the logical culmination of the socioeconomic evolution of the local communities of settled agriculturalists from the sixth to the fourth millennia B.C. Two such centers are known: Namazga-depe at Kaakhka and Altyn-depe at Meana, where systematic excavations have been conducted since 1965 through the joint efforts of the Kara Kum Expedition of the Leningrad Branch of the Archeology Institute, USSR Academy of Sciences, and the Southern Turkmenistan Complex Archeological Expedition of the Turkmenian Academy of Sciences (IuTAKE). 1 This work established that Altyn-depe had a complex internal structure with a separate quarter for craftsmen, a religious center with a monumental ziggurat and a tomb for priests alongside it, quarters for ordinary citizens, and an area occupied by the spacious homes of the local elite. From the size of the dwellings, the composition of the meat foods of the inhabitants of the houses, and the grave goods of the associated tombs, it is possible to identify three social groups in the population of Altyn-depe. The materials obtained made it possible to propose that in this instance we are dealing with the most ancient civilization that existed on the territory of the USSR, and one that clearly belonged to the cultural world of the ancient East. 2 The culture of Altyn-depe was not a self-contained and isolated phenomenon but was part of the system of early urban civilizations of the Bronze Age, which archeological research during the past decade 3 has documented in the broad zone between Mesopotamia and India.
