Landscape archaeology and irrigation systems in Central Asia: a view from Samarkand (Uzbekistan)

Thousands of archaeological mounds and relicts of irrigation canals characterize the Central Asian landscape. Unlike the Near East and Mesopotamia, which have both a long experience in landscape archaeology, in Central Asia this approach is still limited. Only recently, new cooperation programs between local institutions and international teams, as well as improved methods and technologies in recording and analyzing spatial data, have allowed for new season of research in this area of the ancient world. Data from the Samarkand oasis (Uzbekistan) have been already used, though preliminarily, to reconstruct the historical interactions between man and the environment in this region. The main goal of this paper is to rather use the case of Samarkand to introduce some problems connected to the identification and dating of multilayered anthropic mounds (tepa) and abandoned irrigation canals. After a brief comparison between the landscape archaeology tradition in Central Asia, Mesopotamia and the Near East, methods and results from the Uzbek-Italian Archaeological Expedition in Samarkand are presented. Finally, the main markers used in chronological attribution will be considered in an attempt to provide some insights on both the benefits and limits of such a methodological approach.