Introduction

The six landlocked nations that constitute Central Asia share a history inuenced by uid exchange, largely attributable to the more than 2,000 year legacy of the great Asian trade routes commonly referred to as the Silk Road.1 These corridors connected the region to the civilizations of China, Persia and the Eastern Mediterranean, while the equally important “Great Indian Road” south, through Afghanistan to India, completed one of history’s most storied cultural crossroads.2 Though sparsely populated today by Asian standards, the vast region boasts a number of ancient urban settlements, several of which remain major population centers and modern capitals to this day. The region’s nomadic people have played hugely inuential roles in shaping the culture and contours of history in Central Asia through cycles of conict and symbiosis with the region’s important urban centers. Cities like Samarkand, Herat, Ghazni and Bukhara today struggle to balance modern development with urban conservation, while places like Ai Khanoum, Panjakent, Otrar and Merv (the last of which was thought to have once been the largest city in the world) survive only as vast archaeological sites punctuated by massive, crumbling mud brick edices.3 The eective conservation of earthen architecture – the region’s principal historic building material – stands above all else as the Central Asia’s chief heritage management challenge.