Between Angkor and Champa: Political Economy of the Buffer Zone

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.

Highland Southeast Asia was historically the domain of ethnic swiddeners, in contrast with the wet rice farmers of lowland states. Recent scholarship has re-envisioned these upland groups as active agents who resisted lowland state domination, rather than viewing them as isolated tribal groups. Highlands located east of the Mekong River in southeastern Laos, eastern Cambodia, and west-central Vietnam form a buffer zone that separated Angkor from Champa, and documentary records suggest complex dynamics between neighbors. The 10th-13th century CE rise of Angkorian power involved a series of battles between Angkor, Champa, their internal rebels, and occasionally, the highlanders. Archaeologists have yet to contribute to this discussion. This paper uses archaeological, historical, and art historical data to explore political economic relationships between Angkor, Champa, and upland groups in the buffer zone. In this model, the buffer zone was neither passive nor remote: it played an important role in the sociopolitical and economic development of both Angkor and Champa. The distribution of Khmer and Cham style temples and inscriptions in the highland during the 7th-14th century CE, and the 16th-19th CE records of politics and economic interactions suggest an interdependent economic system between the highland and lowland communities.

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): 24556