Abstract
This paper aims to study interactions between ancient societies in semi-arid mountainous landscape of southern Central Asia using GIS based mobility analysis. The study region covers the south-eastern part of Uzbekistan along with narrow strips of neighbouring countries with a core area around present-day Darband village in the Baysun District.
The presented GIS model is based on cumulative focal mobility network (CFMN) analysis derived from freely available ASTER DEM. Basically, CFMN approach builds on the idea of "movement without destination".
Even if the model should be generally valid for any historical period, our primary targeted period was the early historic, particularly Achaemenid and Hellenistic ones, connected with movement of large armed forces over the mountains. The model was immediately tested in the field and adjusted according to the arhaeological reality.
Predicted paths were confirmed in the field by finds of various nature, such as small setlements and individual objects. Moreover, the use and the course of historical roads was corroborated also by their functioning in the recent past or even nowadays.
The pre-dictive - post-dictive framework of the research allowed us to reflect field observations in the model building and better understand archaeological findings. Resulting sequence of algorithms of the CFMN approach appears to be well-suitable for the region-scale research of communication networks and mobility of ancient populations.