Emerging Epicenters and Complementary Centralized and Decentralized Water Management Strategies at Medieval Angkor, Cambodia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent research at Angkor has aggregated over 20 years of archaeological map data, which is providing important new perspectives on the agricultural production system of the polycentric low-density urban complex. Much scholarly attention has been directed towards the functional vs. ritual nature of the huge reservoirs and channels (Van Liere, 1980). However, smaller, community-based agricultural units were likely important components of the agricultural system. In this paper, I trace the chronological and spatial development of two types of settlement patterns: 1) formally-planned dense urban zones that are termed epicenters and 2) lower-density settlement units comprised of temples and associated reservoirs and occupation mounds that are termed temple communities. Building from the work of Evans et al. 2013, this paper argues that groups of non-producers that lived in the epicenters would have been highly dependent on agricultural surplus produced by temple communities utilizing local and state hydraulic features. To determine if new temple communities are built near state-sponsored hydraulic infrastructure, nearest neighbor analysis and point density analysis are conducted. Results suggest that temple communities cluster around state-sponsored hydraulic features.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• The Current State of Archaeological Research across Southeast Asia

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24542