1 Research Proposal Roberto Arciero MA Adaptation strategies, water management and social changes: the case of Turkmenistan INTRODUCTION The present PhD proposal aims to examine the human-environmental interactions and the environmental adaptation strategies adopted by sedentary farmers in the arid lands of the northern fringe of the Murghab alluvial fan (Turkmenistan) between the middle of the third and the early first millennium BC. The research aims to understand how sedentary farmers have interacted and changed the arid landscape and what changes occurred in the management of the river network at the time of the arrival of the nomadic groups from the north at the end of the Bronze Age. I will do this through the investigation of the spatial distribution of ancient river networks, analysing the diachronic sequence of the paleochannels and the different water management strategies adopted over time in selected areas. I will adopt a GIS-based approach that combines data generated through remote sensing studies and intensive field survey, both done in cooperation with the “Italian Archaeological Mission in the Murghab Delta”. RESEARCH CONTEXT Human-environmental interactions and interaction in arid lands have been studied and discussed over the last fifty years (Dincauze, 2000). The early theory up to the 1970s, with a deterministic approach, in which human decisions were only determined by local resource availability and environmental features, was then completely replaced with an understanding of how people are both affected by and affect the environment. Studying the mutual influences of climate-human- environment relationships represent a key factor to understand. In this context, climatic conditions and human adaptation need to be accounted for, in the construction of archaeological models and hypothesis (Morales at al., 2009). The social organisation of human societies are not only determined by the environment, but the environment sets the frame to which they must adapt, and this suggests that human activities and environmental changes should be viewed together as a co-