Urbanism and Residential Patterning in Angkor

ABSTRACT

The Khmer Empire (9th–15th centuries a.d.), centered on the Greater Angkor region, was the most extensive political entity in the history of mainland Southeast Asia. Stone temples constructed by Angkorian kings and elites were widely assumed to have been loci of ritual as well as habitation, though the latter has been poorly documented archaeologically. In this paper, we present the results of two field seasons of excavation at the temple site of Ta Prohm. Using LiDAR data to focus our excavations, we offer evidence for residential occupation within the temple enclosure from before the 11th century a.d. until the 14th century. A comparison with previous work exploring habitation areas within the Angkor Wat temple enclosure highlights similarities and differences between the two temples. We argue that temple habitation was a key component of the Angkorian urban system and that investigating this unique form of urbanism expands current comparative research on the diversity of ancient cities.

KEYWORDS:

• Angkor
• Cambodia
• urbanism
• LiDAR
• community planning

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the APSARA National Authority for their collaboration and permission to undertake excavations within the Ta Prohm enclosure. We thank So Malay and Martin King for administrative support, and GAP 2012 and 2014 crew members, whose labor produced this research. We thank the PT McElhanney, Indonesia company for its contribution to the LiDAR acquisition, which was funded by eight institutions: the Khmer Archaeology LiDAR Consortium (KALC), APSARA National Authority, the University of Sydney, the École française d’Extrême-Orient, Société Concessionaire d’Aéroport, the Hungarian Southeast Asian Research Institute, Japan-APSARA Safeguarding Angkor, the Archaeology and Development Foundation, and the World Monuments Fund. Damian Evans’ contribution to this project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 639828). This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under grant DP1092663. We also wish to thank The Robert Christie Foundation. We are indebted to Drs. Mitch Hendrickson and Michael E. Smith for providing invaluable comments on earlier drafts and Christophe Pottier for his insights on Angkorian urbanism. All mistakes are the responsibility of the principal author.

Notes on Contributors

Alison Kyra Carter (Ph.D. 2013, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. Her doctoral research focused on trade and exchange of glass and stone beads within mainland Southeast Asia during the Iron Age period. Her current project is focused on household archaeology during the Angkorian period.

Piphal Heng (Ph.D. 2018, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa) did his doctoral research focused on pre-Angkorian settlement patterns, economy and politics, and his Cambodian archaeology interests also include Angkorian and post-Angkorian political economy.

Miriam Stark (Ph.D. 1993, University of Arizona) is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Her research focuses primarily on Cambodian archaeology and covers themes related to urbanism, residential patterning, landscape ecology, political economy, and ceramics.

Rachna Chhay (B.A. 2002, Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh) is a research archaeologist with APSARA National Authority (Kingdom of Cambodia). His research focuses primarily on Angkorian economics, with a particular emphasis on craft production and consumption (stoneware ceramics) and on agriculture.

Damian Evans (Ph.D. 2007, University of Sydney) is a Research Fellow at the French Institute of Asian Studies (EFEO). His work revolves around using advanced geospatial technologies for mapping and analyzing archaeological landscapes. His current project uses airborne laser scanning or LiDAR methods for a large-scale comparative investigation of early urbanism in Southeast Asia.

ORCID

Alison Carter http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6331-2149

Piphal Heng http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5020-0092

Miriam Stark http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1700-4406

Rachna Chhay http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5591-0736

Damian Evans http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0320-4319