Rocco Rante, Louvre Museum, "Evolution of Settlement and Habitat in the Bukhara Oasis between Antiquity and the Islamic Periods"

Rocco Rante, Louvre Museum, "Evolution of Settlement and Habitat in the Bukhara Oasis between Antiquity and the Islamic Periods"

This presentation focuses on the evolution of settlements in the Bukhara Oasis resulting by the several transformations of the Zerafšan delta and the evolution of urbanism between the late Antiquity and the Islamic period, mostly concentering on habitat space evolution. The recent geo-archaeological researches directed under the aegis of the Louvre Museum brought to light the water changes of the Zerafšan delta since Neolithic to the Antiquity. These transformations generated changes in human behavior in terms of the occupation of territory  as well as  of the urban space. This development should be now imputed to the resulting landscape changes that generated a demographic increase and thus an exponential increase of settlements.