An Examination of the Multiple Roles of Wild and Domestic Animals Excavated from the Vat Komnou Cemetery (200 BCE–400 CE) at Angkor Borei, Cambodia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This talk will discuss the preliminary results of a pilot study focusing on faunal remains from the Early Historic/Pre-Angkorian site of Angkor Borei, Cambodia. Angkor Borei is one of Southeast Asia’s earliest urban centers, located in the Mekong Delta region of southern Cambodia. It was also a prominent trading center from the late first millennium BCE to the first millennium CE. I will present select zooarchaeological remains from burial contexts, excavated as part of the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project (LOMAP), from the Vat Komnou cemetery (200 BCE–400 CE). Initial identification by previous scholars found both wild and domesticated fauna along with all major local taxa. By examining the types and proportions of animals found in this cemetery and comparing this dataset to select zooarchaeological remains from other non-mortuary contexts at Angkor Borei, I examine the potential social roles of these animals, alongside their significance to subsistence, secondary product usage, and labor. Furthermore, I will discuss proposed shifts in human-animal-environment interactions, and how these may coincide with diachronic changes in sociopolitical organization, the subsistence economy, and religious practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• If Animals Could Speak: Negotiating Relational Dynamics between Humans and Animals   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36888.0