Uzbek-Italian Archaeological Project "Samarkand and Its Territory"

The Uzbek-Italian Archaeological Project – UIAP “Samarkand and Its Territory” began in 2001 as a collaboration between the University of Bologna – Department of History and Cultures (formerly Archaeology) and the Institute of Archaeology of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences. The main financial sponsors are the University of Bologna, the International Mediterranean and Oriental Studies Association– ISMEO (formerlyIsIAO), and the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The project’s purpose was to make a diachronic study of the city of Samarkand, which was for a long time the capital of ancient Sogdiana and an important crossroads on the Silk Road, and its relationship to settlement dynamics and landscape transformations from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. Research concerned both regional and local scales and focused on specific topics such as human-environment interactions, the relationship between sedentary farmers and semi-mobile pastoralists, and the development of irrigation systems. Activities included: geoarchaeological surveys; investigation of key sites (Kafir Kala, Boyssartepa, and minor sites); study of the material culture and faunal remains; preparation ofGIS models, remote sensing, and cartography.