Over the last 30 years, archaeologists working in collaboration with Cambodia’s APSARA Authority have been exploring the jungles and rice fields of what were Medieval Cambodia, documenting thousands of medieval features that remain inscribed on the landscape. This work has included digging traditional excavation sites, surveying the landscape from the back of dirt bikes and scanning satellite imagery for traces of these ancient features.
From an article in The Telegraph by Sarah Klassen.
Our knowledge of the region entered a new era in 2012, when researchers from the Khmer Archaeological Lidar Consortium organized a mission of airborne-laser scanning across this World Heritage site. Called lidar, this technology was able to do in a few days of scanning and data-processing what had previously taken archaeologists months if not years of work: see through dense vegetation to accurately map the ground surface of Angkor.
With this lidar data, researchers were able to map tens of thousands of archaeological features at Angkor. Because Angkorian people, like many Cambodians today, built their houses out of organic materials and on wooden posts, these structures are long gone and not visible on the landscape. But lidar revealed a complex urban landscape complete with city blocks consisting of the mounds where people built their houses and small ponds located next to them.
This work has created one of the most comprehensive maps of a sprawling medieval city in the world, leading us to ask: How did the city develop over time, and how many people lived here?
Deducing who used these structures and how
Our new research published in the journal Science Advances created a comprehensive database that unites 2012 lidar mapping work with a massive archaeological data set acquired by an internationalteam of scholars over the last 30 years. Our goal was to combine all available data into one framework so we could understand which buildings had existed at various points in time and then ascribe the right number of people to each structure in order to come up with overall population estimates.
The part of Angkor’s landscape that most people are familiar with is what we call the civic-ceremonial center – it includes major stone temples such as Angkor Wat and the Bayon. These areas are similar to what you might consider “downtown.” We think many of the people living here supported the operation of the temples and state government as craft specialists, artisans, dancers, priests or teachers. These people would have relied on rice surplus generated by farmers, although recent work suggests they may have also tended small house gardens.
For the complete article on Medieval Cambodia CLICK HERE.
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