The 2012 World Monuments Fund Watch List

Necropolises of Mangystau, Kazakhstan
Central Asia's nomads may have roamed across steppes and mountains for centuries, but they were still profoundly moored to the worship of ancestors. The myriad sacred burial grounds in Kazakhstan's Mangystau region carry within their architecture traces of Islam's influence on the region's nomadic traditions. But a near century of atheist Soviet rule has left education and awareness about these sites wanting.

• The 2010 WMF Watch List