Staying Afloat: A Comparative Case Study of Angkor Wat and Tikal’s Management of Water

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation is a large-scale comparative case study of two distinct regions to see how their use and control of water was similar given their environments but different from social, political, and cultural perspectives. Specifically, I examine the sociopolitical nature of Angkor Wat as an expression of ancient Khmer culture and the Classic Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala. These two elaborate polities emerged in similarly challenging environmental settings, which impacted the way they utilized and manipulated water as a natural resource, vital to the success of their civilizations. Both societies had advanced hydraulic infrastructures for managing water for domestic and ritualistic purposes, and they were both located in semitropical regions with dense rainforest. By utilizing GIS and remote sensing, I incorporate geological principles of spatial analysis to examine water control from a remote perspective. I discuss how advancements such as LiDAR have impacted our understanding of these societies in a holistic sense, with specific reference to water control. I discuss the iconography intrinsic to public architecture at both polities to explore how the idea of water was presented in a religious manner.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25902