Residential patterning at Angkor Wat

17 pages. Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2015. First published on December 7th, 2015 at doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2015.159Considerable attention has been devoted to the architecture and art history of Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple in the last century. There has, however, been little research on the functions and internal organisation of the large rectangular enclosure surrounding the temple. Such enclosures have long been assumed to have been sacred precincts, or perhaps ‘temple-cities’: work exploring the archaeological patterning for habitation within them has been limited. The results of LiDAR survey and excavation have now revealed evidence for low-density residential occupation in these areas, possibly for those servicing the temple. Recent excavations within the enclosure challenge our traditional understanding of the social hierarchy of the Angkor Wat community and show that the temple precinct, bounded by moat and wall, may not have been exclusively the preserve of the wealthy or the priestly elite.Gracious thanks are extended to the APSARA Authority for permission to undertake field investigations in the Angkor Wat enclosure, including HE Bun Narith, HE Ros Borath and An Sopheap, which were undertaken under ARC grant DP1092663. We thank So Malay and Martin King for administrative support, and GAP 2010 and 2013 crew members, whose labour produced this research. Damian Evans drafted Figures 1–5. Martin King and Alex Morrison provided additional graphical expertise; conversations with Christophe Pottier, Roland Fletcher, Ea Darith, Ian Lowman, David Brotherson and Paul Lavy were exceptionally helpful. Thanks also to Li Baoping, John Miksic and Louise Cort for identifications of Chinese tradewares in the 2010 excavated materials. We thank the PT McElhanney, Indonesia, company for its contribution to the LiDAR acquisition, which was funded by eight institutions in the Khmer Archaeology LiDAR Consortium: APSARA Authority, the University of Sydney, l’Ecole francaise d’Extreme-Orient, Societe Concessionaire d’Aeroport, the Hungarian Southeast Asian Research Institute, Japan- PSARA Safeguarding Angkor, the Archaeology and Development Foundation and the World Monuments Fund. All mistakes are the responsibility of the principal author

Prasat and Pteah: Habitation within Angkor Wat's temple enclosure

11 pages. First published in "Archaeological Research in Asia" by Elsevier: Carter, A. K., Stark, M. T., Castillo, C. C., Heng, P., Zhuang, Y., & Chhay, R. (2022). Prasat and pteah: Habitation within Angkor Wat's temple enclosure. Archaeological Research in Asia, 32, 100405. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2022.100405The Angkor empire (9-15th centuries CE) was one of mainland Southeast Asia's major civilizations, with a 3000 km2 agro-urban capital located in northwest Cambodia. Since 2010, the Greater Angkor Project has been investigating occupation areas within Angkor's urban core. This work has identified temple enclosures as important residential areas that made up part of Angkor's civic-ceremonial center. In this paper, we review excavations from residential areas within Angkor Wat's temple enclosure. We concentrate on evidence for residential patterning by focusing on our 2015 excavations, one of the largest horizontal excavations of a single occupation mound within Angkor's civic-ceremonial center. These data offer further evidence for archaeological patterns of residential occupation within the Angkor Wat temple enclosure and a comparative dataset for future research of habitation areas within Angkor as well as domestic spaces in other urban settings.The authors wish to thank the APSARA Authority for permission to undertake excavations at Angkor Wat and their cooperation and collaboration in undertaking this research. We also thank Dr. Roland Fletcher for his guidance and support of our project. We extend our deepest gratitude to So Malay and Martin King for administrative support and the University of Sydney Robert Christie Research Centre. Thanks also go to Alyssa Loyless for help with Fig. 2. This work would not have been possible without efforts from the 2010, 2013, and 2015 field crews. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant DP1092663; National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration under Grant 9602–14; and Dumbarton Oaks under a Project Grant in Garden and Landscape Studies

The evolution of agro-urbanism: A case study from Angkor, Cambodia

16 pages. Published in "Journal of Anthropological Archaeology" by Elsevier: A.K. Carter, S. Klassen, M.T. Stark, M. Polkinghorne, P. Heng, D.H. Evans, R. Chhay; The evolution of agro-urbanism: a case study from Angkor, Cambodia; J. Anthropol. Archaeol., 63 (2021), Article 101323The vast agro-urban settlements that developed in the humid tropics of Mesoamerica and Asia contained both elite civic-ceremonial spaces and sprawling metropolitan areas. Recent studies have suggested that both local autonomy and elite policies facilitated the development of these settlements; however, studies have been limited by a lack of detail in considering how, when, and why these factors contributed to the evolution of these sites. In this paper, we use a fine-grained diachronic analysis of Angkor’s landscape to identify both the state-level policies and infrastructure and bottom-up organization that spurred the growth of Angkor as the world’s most extensive pre-industrial settlement complex. This degree of diachronic detail is unique for the ancient world. We observe that Angkor’s low-density metropolitan area and higher-density civic-ceremonial center grew at different rates and independently of one another. While local historical factors contributed to these developments, we argue that future comparative studies might identify similar patterns.The Authors thank the APSARA National Authority for their permission to conduct remote sensing and field investigations. Thanks also to Roland Fletcher for his support. Thank you to Terry and Eileen Lustig for their comments and suggestions on aspects of economic geography and Michael E. Smith for reading and offering comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks to Malay So and Maryne Dana for administrative support. Research, planning, and writing of this manuscript was undertaken with the support of the University of Oregon Global Oregon Faculty Collaboration Fund supported by the Global Studies Institute in the UO Office of International Affairs. Data collection for parts of the research in this study have been funded by: the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration under Grant 9602-14; Dumbarton Oaks under a Project Grant in Garden and Landscape Studies; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship; the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards (#1638137); Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE150100756) and Council Discovery Grant (DP170102574); and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreements 639828 and 866454)

The Khmer did not live by rice alone: Archaeobotanical investigations at Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

21 pages. Published first in "Archaeological Research in Asia" by ElsevierThe Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influence across mainland Southeast Asia and is now one of the most archaeologically visible polities due to its expansive religious building works. This paper presents archaeobotanical evidence from two of the most renowned Angkorian temples largely associated with kings and elites, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. But it focuses on the people that dwelt within the temple enclosures, some of whom were involved in the daily functions of the temple. Archaeological work indicates that temple enclosures were areas of habitation within the Angkorian urban core and the temples and their enclosures were ritual, political, social, and economic landscapes. This paper provides the first attempt to reconstruct some aspects of the lives of the non-elites living within the temple enclosures by examining the archaeobotanical evidence, both macroremains and phytoliths, from residential contexts and data derived from inscriptions and Zhou Daguan's historical account dating to the 13th century CE. Research indicates that plants found within the temple enclosure of Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat were grown for ritual or medicinal use, and also formed important components of the diet and household economy.We wish to thank the APSARA National Authority for their collaboration and permission to undertake excavations within the Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm enclosures. We thank So Malay and Martin King for administrative support, and Greater Angkor Project 2013–2015 field crew members, whose labor supported this research. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP1092663]. The 2015 fieldwork at Angkor Wat was also supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration Grant and a Dumbarton Oaks Project Grant. The phytolith samples from Angkor Wat were collected by Tegan McGillivray in 2015, processed at University College London by Lindsay Duncan, counted by Alison Weisskopf and analysed by Eleanor Kingwell-Banham. Archaeobotanical research at Ta Prohm was supported by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) [grant number NE/N010957/1]. We also wish to thank The Robert Christie Foundation. Finally, we would like to thank Philip Piper for the financial support of the dating of botanical remains through the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [grant number FT100100527] and Rachel Wood for radiocarbon dating the samples

Diachronic modeling of the population within the medieval Greater Angkor Region settlement complex

9 pagesAngkor is one of the world’s largest premodern settlement complexes (9th to 15th centuries CE), but to date, no comprehensive demographic study has been completed, and key aspects of its population and demographic history remain unknown. Here, we combine lidar, archaeological excavation data, radiocarbon dates, and machine learning algorithms to create maps that model the development of the city and its population growth through time. We conclude that the Greater Angkor Region was home to approximately 700,000 to 900,000 inhabitants at its apogee in the 13th century CE. This granular, diachronic, paleodemographic model of the Angkor complex can be applied to any ancient civilization.We wish to thank the APSARA National Authority for permission to conduct remote sensing and collaborative field investigations. We thank M. So and M. Dana for administrative support. We thank E. Lustig and T. Lustig for comments and suggestions on aspects of economic geography and M. E. Smith and C. Isendahl for reading and offering comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Funding: Much of the work on research, planning, and writing of this manuscript was undertaken with the support of the University of Oregon Global Oregon Faculty Collaboration Fund, supported by the Global Studies Institute in the UO Office of International Affairs. Parts of this research have been funded by the Rust Family Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards (no. 1638137), the ACLS-Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies, Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP1092663, Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE150100756, Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP170102574, and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement nos. 639828 and 866454). Author contributions: S.K. and A.K.C. contributed to the planning of this research. S.K., A.K.C., M.H., and S.O. drafted the manuscript. S.K., A.K.C., D.E., M.T.S., M.P., G.P.M., R.F., and P.H. edited the manuscript. S.K., A.A.L., M.H., J.N.-W., D.E., P.W., and S.O. contributed to the analysis. S.K., A.K.C., P.H., and M.P. compiled the data. S.K., A.K.C., P.H., G.P.M., R.F., D.E., C.P., and M.P. contributed data. S.K., M.H., and A.A.L. designed the figures. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper maybe requested from the authors

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY AND IDEOLOGY: TRANSITION FROM THE EARLY HISTORIC TO PRE-ANGKORIAN PERIOD CAMBODIA, VIEWED FROM THALA BORIVAT

M.A. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

The Angkorian city: From Hariharalaya to Yashodharapura

International audienc

The Angkorian city: From Hariharalaya to Yashodharapura

International audienc