Angkor (Other Keyword)
1-7 (7 Records)
One of the defining features of the great temples of Angkor is the pattern of enclosed space that surrounds many major monuments. The outer limits of these enclosures are frequently bounded by masonry walls and moats. Although more than a century of research has been devoted to understanding the temples that lie at the center of these enclosures, the structure and function of the vast rectilinear spaces that surround them remains very poorly understood. This paper draws on recent fieldwork by...
Beyond the Bayon and Ta Phrom: Modeling Demography and Population Health at Angkor, Capital of Medieval Cambodia (802 – 1431 CE) (2017)
Angkor, the capital of the Khmer empire, is famous for being the largest "dispersed," or "low-density," city in antiquity, with an estimated population of 750,000 people. Attracting and maintaining a large support population of agriculturalists to Angkor was paramount for Khmer rulers in order for them to amass the spiritual and physical capital needed to compete against their rivals in this society’s merit-based, temple economy. In the on-going conversation surrounding Angkor’s domestic...
Developing Typologies of Temple Features of Angkor, Cambodia. (2017)
Over 1,400 temples have been identified surrounding Angkor, the capital of the medieval Khmer Empire (9th-15th centuries CE) in present day Cambodia. Some of these temples contain inscriptions and are easily dated, though many temples are lacking inscriptions and the associated chronological information. In this poster, we inventory and develop typologies for four types of temple features: pedestals, lintels, colonettes, and door frames. We use these diagnostic features to identify relationships...
The Industry of Empire: Investigating the Spatial and Technological Organization of Angkorian Iron Production around Phnom Dek, Cambodia (2017)
Intensive surveys around Phnom Dek, the ‘Iron Mountain’, in central Cambodia have revealed the presence of a massive iron production landscape dating between the 9th and 20th centuries. Using a combination of site morphology, spatial distribution, field pXRF analysis and in-slag radiocarbon datin,g this paper attempts to reconstruct these industrial-scale iron smelting practices with particular emphasis on the Angkorian period (9th to 13th c.). The results will inform on the localized...
Infra-structuration of Imperial Power in Ancient Ankgor and the Andes (2015)
A comparison of the agricultural reclamation projects and religious architectural programs of the Chimú, Inka, and Angkorian empires will serve to demonstrate that statecraft was an inherently technological pursuit in ancient societies. Supra-local political regimes were literally built by and through infrastructure that reconfigured different communities of practice. An important objective of the paper is to demonstrate that an analysis of the materials, temporalities, and technologies...
Mind the Gap: Occupation at Angkor Wat and Implications for the decline of Angkor (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Paradigms Shift: New Interpretations in Mainland Southeast Asian Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Angkor Empire controlled or influenced much of mainland Southeast Asia from the 9-15th centuries CE. Traditionally, scholars have dated the end of the Angkor Empire to 1431 CE, when the capital was sacked by the kingdom of Ayuddhaya in Siam (Thailand). More recent archaeological work has also demonstrated a...
Water, Weather and the Fallacy of the Rationalist - Romanticism dichotomy (2016)
Angkor, in Cambodia, between the 7th and the 13th century depended on the largest urban water management infrastructure of the agrarian urban world. The key elements of this infrastructure came into being before the global climate transition of the 9th-10th century CE. That infrastructure was vital for coping with the start of the Medieval Warm Phase when other societies around the world experienced severe crises. By the 14th century, some parts of Angkor’s infrastructure were nearly 500 years...