Urbanizing Forests: Paleoethnobotanical Research at the Royal Capital of Angkor, Cambodia

Summary

Upon his ascension to the throne, King Yaśovarman I (r. 889-910 AD) founded a new capital at Angkor in northwestern Cambodia that was to become the major center of the Khmer Empire and a dynamic religio-political landscape marked by extensive urbanization and environmental change. Religious institutions played a particularly important role in localized human-environment engagements while contributing to broader processes of polity-building. Drawing on historical ecology, this paper underscores the importance of forests in particular as sites of material and symbolic resources in understanding the production and transformation of the Angkorian landscape. Paleoethnobotanical data collected from archaeological excavations at the Yaśodharāśramas—monastic institutions founded by King Yaśovarman I as part of his building campaign—provide insights into vegetation change, resource use, and social practices as a step towards understanding forest histories and management within the context of urban development at Angkor.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage