CAAL

From megacities to religious sites, from nomadic camps to burial mounds, from mountain forts to complex water management systems, there is an astounding range of archaeological heritage across Central Asia.

While many of these sites are already protected by state legislation, a very significant number are not. This fragile record of the adaption of humans to the complex Central Asian landscapes is under threat from multiple activities: development projects, changing agricultural practices (especially given climate change and the changing patterns of irrigation as a result of the collapsing glaciers of the ‘third pole’ in the Himalaya-Hindu Kush mountain ranges), urban expansion and rural depopulation. At present it is hard to estimate the scale of these threats, but this project will help to understand this. The future depends on strategic planning, where archaeological resources are considered as part of planning and sustainable development policies. This cannot happen unless there is solid, and more accessible, platform of information for the local agencies to work with and engage in this debate.

The project is creating an online digital inventory, adopting the open-source QGIS, and for a front-end the open-source ARCHES inventory package developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and the World Monuments Fund. This is enabling a better understanding of the full range of archaeological heritage distributed across the region, fostering its management and protection.

This exciting project at the UCL Institute of Archaeology is led by Professor Tim Williams, Dr Marco Nebbia, Dr Gai Jorayev and Pang Rui, and is a partnership between institutions from the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Republic of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Republic of Uzbekistan, and the People's Republic of China (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region). It also has a principal partner in the International Institute for Central Asian Studies, based in Samarkand.

The multinational and multidisciplinary team is digitising existing archaeological archives and records, and in doing so is consolidating information held by regional institutions and research centres into a multilingual catalogue. This is being enhanced by research using a combination of high resolution photographic and satellite imagery, along with ‘on the ground’ field visits, discovering new sites, improving documentation, promoting awareness and scholarship, and facilitating policy-making to better enable site and landscape preservation.

The project has created a shared space for archaeologists and heritage professionals, as well as the wider public interested in the fascinating and varied archaeological heritage of Central Asia.

Visit us at uclcaal.org.