M. Forte1, S. Pescarin1, R. Sala2, J.-M. Deom2
1 CNR-ITABC, Inst. per le Tecnologie Applicate ai Beni Culturali, Roma
2 Academy of Sciences , Institute of Archaeology, Almaty, Kazakhstan

General goal of the project, coordinated by CNR-ITABC and supported by INTAS (International Association for the Promotion of Co-operation with Scientists from the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union) is to reconstruct the present conditions and the historical evolution of the land use and irrigation works in three main areas of settlements today exposed to a sensible process of aridisation: Semirechie, South Kazakhstan, Central Kazakhstan (settlements, fortresses and ancient irrigation works from the Early Middle Ages till the rule of the Kazakh hordes VIII-XV AD). The hypothesis of research is that the three regions have always been particularly sensitive to environmental fluctuation; that proper irrigation always played a stabilizing economical role during the last two millenniums; that climatic and anthropogenic reasons have been responsible of the building, restructuring and disrupting of past irrigation works. The goal is to understand the weight of natural and anthropogenic factors behind the actual trend of aridisation and degradation in these areas; the factors that lead to the changes during history; and to compare the present and the past events. The complexity of the project embraces multidisciplinary applications: GIS, GPS, remote sensing, integrated geo-archaeological investigations. This paper constitutes the report of the scientific activity of 2002.
Key words: Kazakhstan, Intas, enviroment, remote sensing, geoarchaeology