Caves serve as a research field for different disciplines of science. Clastic sediments which fill the caves and rockshelters are in the focus of interest of geology, paleogeography, paleobiology, archaeology and anthropology. This is because caves are sediment traps – the depressed landforms which collect sediments continuously for millennia. Significance of caves becomes even greater if we concluded that the types of terrestrial sediment traps are highly limited. The second reason for the scientific value of the caves is that karst cavities were often inhabited by animals and humans. Therefore cave sediments may record the history of past ecosystems and ancient humans, but also the history of terrestrial environmental changes. 

The main objective of this project is to establish the stratigraphy of Quaternary clastic sediments of the selected caves in Central Asia,and to recognize the site formation processes that formed and/or disturbed the sedimentary fills of these caves. A complex geological approach proposed here allows to recognize sedimentological, geochemical and chronological aspects of the depositional and diagenetic processes. The special attention is given in the project to the colluvial facies – their position in sequences, lateral spread and impact on the integrity of strata (and further, the integrity of archaeological, anthropological and paleontological assemblages). The important task is to formulate the lithostratigraphic schemes for studied caves, which can be used for future correlations and may serve as a reference during further excavations. The selected caves are important archaeological and palaeoanthropological sites, what makes the project results useful for a wide range of disciplines.

Project postulates the following research questions to be explained:

• What was the main depositional agent in each stratum? In particular, how did the participation of the main depositional agents (aeolian, fluvial, colluvial, rockfall) changed during Pleistocene and Holocene?
• How abundant were colluvial events and/or other re-depositional processes, and how homogenous are particular strata, including their archaeological/paleontological assemblages?
• What is the correlative value of some characteristic facies of cave sediments known from Central Asian caves? In particular:

• are the colluvial series in different caves connected to the same series of paleoclimatic events? 
• are massive rockfall horizons in different caves connected to the same seismic event?

• Where inside the sequences are cold and warm climatic episodes recorded? In particular, what is the distribution of the indices of chemical (warm) and physical (cold) weathering along the sedimentary profiles? 
• What is the geological age of sedimentary fills of the studied caves? Where in the sedimentary sequences are the boundaries between stratigraphic units (such as Middle Pleistocene, Upper Pleistocene, Holocene and units of lower rank) recorded?