Collaboration, engagement, and Cambodia: Archaeological perspectives on cultural heritage

ABSTRACT

Community archaeology remains rare in Southeast Asian archaeology, where most archaeological engagement takes place within archaeological heritage management contexts. What should community archaeology look like in countries whose majority populations trace their ancestry directly back to monuments which generate huge revenues and whose archaeological records are under threat through development and looting? This article introduces Cambodian archaeological heritage management and its relationships to cultural tourism and economic development. Understanding Cambodian heritage management requires familiarity with UNESCO World Heritage designations which drive many developments in the country. Two primary areas of concern for both community archaeology and more top-down approaches are: (1) the challenges of working between multiple and competing stakeholder agendas, in which local community voices are rarely heard; and (2) the impact of specific management decisions on local communities. Case studies from across the region offer examples of solutions to these seemingly intractable obstacles.

KEYWORDS:

• Archaeology
• cultural heritage
• Cambodia
• Angkor
• community engagement

Acknowledgments

Thanks go to the special issue guest editor for inviting me to participate in this special issue, and to Cambodia's culture ministries who have permitted me to work in Cambodia since 1996, most notably the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, the Archaeology Faculty of the Royal University of Fine Arts, and APSARA Authority. I offer my deepest thanks to Heng Piphal, Bong Sovath, Phon Kaseka and Voeun Vuthy for discussions about heritage and archaeological practice in Cambodia that began more than 20 years ago and have not yet ended. I am also grateful to Stephen Acabado, Carol McDavid, Marta Lorenzon, Rick Bonnie, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which strengthened the paper immeasurably. I am also grateful to my Cambodian colleagues, from students to senior administrators, whose ongoing guidance has been critical to my work.

Notes on contributor

Miriam T. Stark (Professor, Anthropology, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Hawai’i) has worked in Southeast Asia since 1987, and co-directed field-based archaeological projects across Cambodia since 1996 in collaboration with Cambodia's Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and APSARA Authority. Two current projects she co-directs with Cambodian, American and Australian colleagues, P'Teah Cambodia and the Khmer Production and Exchange Project, examine Angkorian-period residence and economy. Her archaeological projects blend research with capacity-building for Khmer and other archaeologists and include heritage management in their long-term research designs. She also directs the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (University of Hawai’i at Mānoa).

Notes

1 The acronym APSARA comes from the agency's French title: Autorité pour la Protection du Site et l’Aménagement de la Region d’Angkor/ Siem Reap (Miura 2011c).

2 The Angkorian temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia) or Prah Vihar (Thailand) straddles the boundary between both countries in Cambodia's far northwest. Control of this region has alternated between Thailand and Cambodia in the last 150 years, and both countries claim the temple as their cultural patrimony (Silverman 2011; Strate 2013; Wagener 2011). Cambodia nominated the Preah Vihear temple for World Heritage status in 2002. Some months ahead of its July 2008 listing, both Cambodia and Thailand sent troops to the border to defend ‘their’ temple. Armed military clashes over the next several years, in response to road upgrading among other actions, killed no fewer than 8 people, displaced thousands of villagers, and stoked nationalist tensions on both sides. Troop drawdown did not occur until sometimes in 2015.