Fig 1 - uploaded by Heng Piphal
Content may be subject to copyright.
Map of Greater Angkor including major temple sites and features; (Inset Top Left) regional view; (Inset Bottom Left) detail of Angkor Wat temple. Data courtesy of National Aeronautics and Space Administration Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (NASA-SRTM) and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Damian Evans, and Christophe Pottier.
Source publication
The 9th-15th century Angkorian state was Southeast Asia's greatest premodern empire and Angkor Wat in the World Heritage site of Angkor is one of its largest religious monuments. Here we use excavation and chronometric data from three field seasons at Angkor Wat to understand the decline and reorganization of the Angkorian Empire, which was a more...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... | collapse | Angkor | Cambodia | Angkor Wat T he Angkorian civilization at its height covered large portions of mainland Southeast Asia, and its heartland and capital were located on the banks of the Tonle Sap lake, near the town of Siem Reap in Cambodia (Fig. 1). Archaeologists and historians have dated the beginning of the Angkor Empire to 802 CE when, as an 11th century inscription describes, King Jayavarman II united disparate factions within the region and declared himself a universal king (1). Angkor's demise has conventionally been dated to 1431 CE, when Thai chronicles state the city ...
Context 2
... this paper, we use excavation data and Bayesian modeling of radiocarbon dates from the Angkor Wat enclosure to present a revised picture of the timing of occupation around this temple (Fig. 1). We argue that such high-resolution chronological analysis is necessary for understanding local historical sequences and that this contributes to our understanding of the tempo of organizational change taking place during the "collapse" of Angkor. We begin by reviewing the current state of evidence regarding Angkor's decline, then ...
Context 3
... impacts of these climatic changes within Greater Angkor. Angkorians managed their seasonal monsoon climate by constructing a massive water network, which included large water storage tanks called baray as well as canals, dykes, and smaller ponds (28,29). The largest of these features was the 11th century West Baray, whose dimensions were 8 × 2 km (Fig. 1). However, palynological studies from a pond within a man-made island in the center of the West Baray point toward partial drying during the late 12th century, indicating a longer history of climatic challenges to the water management network than previously imagined (30). Other paleoenvironmental studies from the West Baray identify ...
Context 4
... Wat has remained an important temple that was never abandoned; inscriptions and modifications on the temple itself testify to its long history and importance. Although a precise construction date is unknown, it is believed the temple of Angkor Wat was built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II, who began his reign in 1113 CE (39, 40) (Fig. 1). This was a period of expansion for the Angkor Empire as Suryavarman II extended the borders and in addition to Angkor Wat, built several striking temples in both the Angkor region and parts of what is now Northeast ...
Context 5
... of the enclosure. The 2013 fieldwork took advantage of the available LIDAR data to continue 1 × 2 m test trenches within the eastern enclosure and the orthogonal grid outside the eastern moat (the external eastern enclosure) (44). The GAP 2015 fieldwork returned to one mound (identified S1E2M1 in our grid system see Fig. 2, see also SI Appendix, Fig. S1) within the Angkor Wat enclosure to conduct a horizontal excavation to better understand the spatial distribution of occupation activities. These excavations demonstrated that the mounds within and outside the enclosure were used for habitation, including ceramics associated with cooking, floor/occupation surfaces, and plant remains ...
Context 6
... period, is generally thinner than our Angkorian habitation deposits (layers 2 and 3), falling within the top 30-40 cm our trenches. Few in situ features were recovered in layer 1, which were also bioturbated from the more recent forest cover of the enclosure. Approximately 25% fewer ceramics were found in layer 1 than layer 2 (SI Appendix, Fig. S1). Micromorphological and geophysical analyses reveal clear sedimentation changes in the transition from layer 2 to layer 1. Compared with the relatively well-sorted and rounded-shaped sediments of layer 2, layer 1 contains abundant poorly sorted, angular-shaped sediments, including very coarse-sized gravels. Micromorphological features ...
Context 7
... | collapse | Angkor | Cambodia | Angkor Wat T he Angkorian civilization at its height covered large portions of mainland Southeast Asia, and its heartland and capital were located on the banks of the Tonle Sap lake, near the town of Siem Reap in Cambodia (Fig. 1). Archaeologists and historians have dated the beginning of the Angkor Empire to 802 CE when, as an 11th century inscription describes, King Jayavarman II united disparate factions within the region and declared himself a universal king (1). Angkor's demise has conventionally been dated to 1431 CE, when Thai chronicles state the city ...
Context 8
... this paper, we use excavation data and Bayesian modeling of radiocarbon dates from the Angkor Wat enclosure to present a revised picture of the timing of occupation around this temple (Fig. 1). We argue that such high-resolution chronological analysis is necessary for understanding local historical sequences and that this contributes to our understanding of the tempo of organizational change taking place during the "collapse" of Angkor. We begin by reviewing the current state of evidence regarding Angkor's decline, then ...
Context 9
... impacts of these climatic changes within Greater Angkor. Angkorians managed their seasonal monsoon climate by constructing a massive water network, which included large water storage tanks called baray as well as canals, dykes, and smaller ponds (28,29). The largest of these features was the 11th century West Baray, whose dimensions were 8 × 2 km (Fig. 1). However, palynological studies from a pond within a man-made island in the center of the West Baray point toward partial drying during the late 12th century, indicating a longer history of climatic challenges to the water management network than previously imagined (30). Other paleoenvironmental studies from the West Baray identify ...
Context 10
... Wat has remained an important temple that was never abandoned; inscriptions and modifications on the temple itself testify to its long history and importance. Although a precise construction date is unknown, it is believed the temple of Angkor Wat was built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II, who began his reign in 1113 CE (39, 40) (Fig. 1). This was a period of expansion for the Angkor Empire as Suryavarman II extended the borders and in addition to Angkor Wat, built several striking temples in both the Angkor region and parts of what is now Northeast ...
Context 11
... of the enclosure. The 2013 fieldwork took advantage of the available LIDAR data to continue 1 × 2 m test trenches within the eastern enclosure and the orthogonal grid outside the eastern moat (the external eastern enclosure) (44). The GAP 2015 fieldwork returned to one mound (identified S1E2M1 in our grid system see Fig. 2, see also SI Appendix, Fig. S1) within the Angkor Wat enclosure to conduct a horizontal excavation to better understand the spatial distribution of occupation activities. These excavations demonstrated that the mounds within and outside the enclosure were used for habitation, including ceramics associated with cooking, floor/occupation surfaces, and plant remains ...
Context 12
... period, is generally thinner than our Angkorian habitation deposits (layers 2 and 3), falling within the top 30-40 cm our trenches. Few in situ features were recovered in layer 1, which were also bioturbated from the more recent forest cover of the enclosure. Approximately 25% fewer ceramics were found in layer 1 than layer 2 (SI Appendix, Fig. S1). Micromorphological and geophysical analyses reveal clear sedimentation changes in the transition from layer 2 to layer 1. Compared with the relatively well-sorted and rounded-shaped sediments of layer 2, layer 1 contains abundant poorly sorted, angular-shaped sediments, including very coarse-sized gravels. Micromorphological features ...
Citations
... Work notes that the 'buddhicisation' of any site also absorbed the Indic gods and other mythical beings such as nāga 4 into Buddhist cosmic schemes, bringing the already appropriated tutelary deities along with them into the Theravādin Cambodian geobody (Work 2019, 79). Thompson also highlights direct references to ancestors, social memory, and historical consciousness through the numerous satyapranidhāna (vows of truth) within the great temple of Angkor Wat (see below), which was reoriented as a royal Buddhist monument from a temple of Vishnu by the mid-16 th century (Carter et al. 2019;Thompson 2004). For example, IMA 3/1579 CE, written as a vow of truth by King Sattha I (1576-1584 CE) of the later Cambodian capital of Longvek, noted his establishment of a reliquary within the temple's Bakan (Central Sanctuary), within which he "deposited the sacred relics, transferring the fruit of his royal works to the four august ancestors (or Buddhas), in homage above all to his noble father the deceased King, as well as to his august ancestors of the past seven generations . . . to elevate the glory of the royal family to its past brilliance, to stave off its ruin…" (Polkinghorne 2022;Pou 1970, 99-126;Thompson 2004, 36). ...
... We subsequently excavated a northern offshoot of 1000 following the course of the blocks, which unearthed two complete Chinese tradeware jarlets ( Figure 11); the celadon jarlet was verified to contain ash and human bone-fragments, 18 a unique example of a burial found within the buddhasīmā. Both vessels were artistically seriated to the late Yuan -early Ming Dynasty (c. 14 th century) (NUS Museum, pers comm; see Addis 1976), although Carter et al. (2019) note that the presence of blue-and-white Chinese tradewares in Cambodia before the 15 th century is extremely rare regardless of their period of manufacture (though not entirely unheard of; see Sato 2022, 222). Thus, although no charcoal was unearthed from this area of the trench for radiocarbon dating, one interpretation of the superposition of the block pedestal above the remains of the roof was the interment of ATV009's collective funerary deposit/burial reliquary after its abandonment. ...
A growing body of scholarship exploring Cambodia's cultural-religious environment alongside reinterpretations of ancient Angkorian epigraphy has illuminated the enduring sacredness of Cambodia's ancient religious places and objects. This assertion comes despite apparent dissociation of these elements from their original ascribed identities (Brahmano-Buddhist) and disuse as focal points of politico-religious congregation at some point in the past. Although documented within Cambodian archaeological studies since the 20 th century, fieldwork conducted at ancient Theravāda Buddhist monasteries (vihāra/prah ̣ vihār) within the Khmer civic-ceremonial center of Angkor Thom between 2017 and 2023 have substantiated that these ancient statues and holy spaces continued to serve as equivalently spiritual, highly localized arenas of ancestral animist practices and cultural-historical negotiation over time. This paper assesses several categories of these archaeological data within the framework of reidentification, reuse, and transformation beyond initial discard, including the deposition of statuary and acts of place-making in the vicinity of older ruins. ARTICLE HISTORY
... This conclusion is reinforced by the positive correlations identified between our streamflow reconstruction data and the dry-season NDVI, an indirect indicator of grain yield. Whereas the high streamflow probably facilitated larger fish harvests 60 (Supplementary Fig. 11) and supported the economic and political strengths required to implement major construction projects, such as Angkor Wat and Pagan City, the low streamflow measured from the early thirteenth century to the late fifteenth century were largely characterized by the limited fish stock associated with the demise of the Khmer Empire 61 and the abandonment of Angkor Wat, which did not occur rapidly but rather was an extended process 20,62,63 . This is because, even though prosperous nations may be more resilient and potentially more adaptive to climatic extremes, the influence of long-term adverse environmental factors may affect this resilience, and hydrological extremes may trigger gradual societal changes [61][62][63] . ...
... Whereas the high streamflow probably facilitated larger fish harvests 60 (Supplementary Fig. 11) and supported the economic and political strengths required to implement major construction projects, such as Angkor Wat and Pagan City, the low streamflow measured from the early thirteenth century to the late fifteenth century were largely characterized by the limited fish stock associated with the demise of the Khmer Empire 61 and the abandonment of Angkor Wat, which did not occur rapidly but rather was an extended process 20,62,63 . This is because, even though prosperous nations may be more resilient and potentially more adaptive to climatic extremes, the influence of long-term adverse environmental factors may affect this resilience, and hydrological extremes may trigger gradual societal changes [61][62][63] . ...
The great river systems originating from the Tibetan Plateau are pivotal for the wellbeing of more than half the global population. Our understanding of historical ranges and future changes in water availability for much of Southeast Asia is, however, limited by short observational records and complex environmental factors. Here we present annually resolved and absolutely dated tree ring-based streamflow reconstructions for the Mekong, Salween and Yarlung Tsangpo rivers since 1000 ce, which are supplemented by corresponding model projections until 2100 ce. We show a significant positive correlation between streamflow and dry season vegetation indices over the Indochinese Peninsula, revealing the importance of the Tibetan Water Tower for the functioning and productivity of ecological and societal systems in Southeast Asia. The streamflow variability is associated with low-frequency sea-surface temperature variability in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. We find that streamflow extremes coincide with distinct shifts in local populations that occurred during medieval times, including the occupation and subsequent collapse of Angkor Wat from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. Finally, our projections suggest that future streamflow changes will reach, or even exceed, historical ranges by the end of this century, posing unprecedented risks for Southeast Asia.
... Laura Junker has used political economy to frame her careerlong Philippines research on coastal/upland exchange systems vis-a-vis external contact (e.g., Junker 1999Junker , 2004. Several women archaeologists, from Janice Stargardt (1990) and Karen Mudar (1999) to Miriam Stark and Alison Carter (Carter et al. 2019;Stark 2006), have studied Southeast Asia's premodern urbanism and early states using comparative anthropological perspectives. These approaches are novel for a region where archaeology is traditionally viewed within the humanities, not the social sciences. ...
Southeast Asians have venerated their past for centuries, but modern Southeast Asian archaeology is less than a century old. Academics and local heritage management help shape the current archaeology scene today as heritage management competes with research-driven projects. What was, in the mid-twentieth century, a largely Euroamerican male profession is changing by the decade as more Southeast Asia-based archaeologists enter the field. As Southeast Asian women have increasingly pursued higher education across the region in recent decades, more Southeast Asian women have entered archaeology. However, few archaeologists have previously considered the impact of women in Southeast Asian archaeology, even though women archaeologists direct several of the longest-running research programs across the region. Our chapter reviews women archaeologists’ contributions to Southeast Asian archaeology historically and holistically, balancing the work of both foreign and Southeast Asian practitioners and tacking between key discoveries and career-long contributions. We place these developments within historical and cultural contexts of Southeast Asian archaeology to understand women’s roles, the diversity of perspectives they offer, the barriers that they face, and their remarkable contributions to Southeast Asian archaeology both nationally and internationally.KeywordsSoutheast Asian archaeologyColonial archaeologyPost-colonial archaeologyContemporary archaeologyGender and archaeology
... Despite its size and large population, few projects have investigated residential aspects of Angkorian urbanism until recently (Bâty et al., 2014;Carter et al., 2018;Stark et al., 2015). Work by the Greater Angkor Project (henceforth GAP) since 2010 investigated habitation areas within Angkor's civic-ceremonial center, focusing especially but not exclusively, on temple enclosure spaces to elucidate the nature and timing of Angkorian-period habitation (Carter et al., 2018;Carter et al., 2019;Castillo et al., 2020;Heng et al., 2022;Stark et al., 2015). This paper concentrates on archaeological evidence for habitation within Angkor Wat's temple enclosure and focuses on our 2015 excavation when we undertook the broadest horizontal excavations of a single mound in the temple complex (Figs. 2 and 3). ...
... The 2015 fieldwork involved horizontal excavation to understand residential patterning on a single mound whose previous testing produced ample possible habitation evidence and an 11th to 13th century radiometric date (see the SI Appendix in Carter et al., 2019): Mound 1 in Grid S1E2 (Fig. 3). This earlier excavation identified a ceramics concentration with multiple nearly complete vessels, including an earthenware water jar and carbonized materials whose haphazard position suggests a dump (US19007, Fig. 5). ...
... Our 2010 and 2013 field seasons identified four layers associated with different phases of activity within the enclosure, which we summarize here (for detailed discussions, see Carter et al., 2019;Stark et al., 2015). Layer 4 is our bottom sterile layer, encountered in the 2010 and 2013 excavations (Stark et al., 2015). ...
The Angkor empire (9-15th centuries CE) was one of mainland Southeast Asia's major civilizations, with a 3000 km² agro-urban capital located in northwest Cambodia. Since 2010, the Greater Angkor Project has been investigating occupation areas within Angkor's urban core. This work has identified temple enclosures as important residential areas that made up part of Angkor's civic-ceremonial center. In this paper, we review excavations from residential areas within Angkor Wat's temple enclosure. We concentrate on evidence for residential patterning by focusing on our 2015 excavations, one of the largest horizontal excavations of a single occupation mound within Angkor's civic-ceremonial center. These data offer further evidence for archaeological patterns of residential occupation within the Angkor Wat temple enclosure and a comparative dataset for future research of habitation areas within Angkor as well as domestic spaces in other urban settings.
... d the growth of the urban population for most of Angkor's history, the final period, from 1181 to 1300 CE, marks a rapid expansion of population in the urban core. This period corresponds to the reign of Jayavarman VII, generally regarded as the apogee of the empire, after which a centuries-long period of decline set in (A. K. Carter, et al., 2021;A. K. Carter, et al., 2019). ...
A dominant view in economic anthropology is that farmers must overcome decreasing marginal returns in the process of intensification. However, it is difficult to reconcile this view with the emergence of urban systems, which require substantial increases in labor productivity to support a growing non-farming population. This quandary is starkly posed by the rise of Angkor (Cambodia, 9th-fourteenth centuries CE), one of the most extensive preindustrial cities yet documented through archaeology. Here, we leverage extensive documentation of the Greater Angkor Region to illustrate how the social and spatial organization of agricultural production contributed to its food system. First, we find evidence for supra-household-level organization that generated increasing returns to farming labor. Second, we find spatial patterns which indicate that land-use choices took transportation costs to the urban core into account. These patterns suggest agricultural production at Angkor was organized in ways that are more similar to other forms of urban production than to a smallholder system.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10816-021-09535-5.
... Our paper builds on recent high-resolution excavation data on domestic activities (Bâty et al., 2014;Carter et al., 2018;Stark et al., 2015) to identify another important urban residential zone common across the ancient world: the district. Our earlier work that described temple enclosure spaces (Carter et al., 2018(Carter et al., , 2019Stark et al., 2015) offers insights on one possible form of Angkorian neighborhood, or smaller zones of "intensive face-to-face" social interaction (Smith, 2010, 137). The districts that we explore in this paper are also residential areas, but are larger and consist of "some kind of administrative or social identity within a city" (Smith, 2010, 140). ...
The capital of Angkor remained the powerbase of the Khmer polity for more than 600 years, indicating its resilience. Recent work at Angkor investigates the evolution of this massive agro-urban center, but most of that research has focused on large-scale landscape developments rather than occupational sequences at urban localities. Our paper blends remotely-sensed ground survey, excavation, art historic, and epigraphic data in the Pre Rup area (and specifically around the Kok Phnov settlement) to provide a fine-grained perspective on the development of Angkor's urban configuration through time. We write against the assumption that successive state temples defined neighborhoods and temple communities across Angkor urban space and illustrate their interconnectivity as “districts” that sustained the urban core. Districts, as administrative units, included civic-ceremonial, craft production, and residential neighborhoods. Drawing on field-based investigations of mound clusters at Kok Phnov we offer evidence for continuous habitation and craft production from the 9th–16th centuries. We use this patterning in the larger Eastern District to argue that Angkorian urbanism developed unevenly through time and space, and that bottom-up social forces – as well as state design and topography – crafted its form. Such neighborhoods and districts were foundational elements to Angkorian urbanism, and studying their occupational sequences sheds light on Angkor's dynamic and resilient 600-year urban history.
... Much of the Theravada Buddhist activity at Angkor, meanwhile, has been blindly attributed to the much-celebrated rediscovery and restoration of the 12 th century Vaiṣṇava temple of Angkor Wat during the "post-Angkorian/Middle Period" (c. 15 th -19 th centuries) by King Ang Chan from Longvek (r. 1516-1566 CE) (Groslier 1958), which through epigraphic and radiometric evidence is known to have formed the focus of an international pilgrimage site well into the 19 th century (Carter et al. 2019;Pou 1970). Additionally, the rise and dissemination of Theravada Buddhism during the late Angkorian Period is often overshadowed in recent scholarship by models of contemporary environmental and hydraulic collapse (see Fletcher et al. 2017;Klassen et al. 2021a), which while relevant to understanding the gradual depopulation and subsequent desertion of Angkor by its ruling class does not easily allow for a discussion of concurrent social processes. ...
... Furthermore, fragmentary epigraphic and chronometric analysis of Angkor's Brahmano-Buddhist monuments indicate that a substantial, yet gradual campaign of temple conversion occurred across Angkor between the 13 th -16 th centuries. This process is traditionally exemplified by the 16 th century conversion and restoration of the 12 th century temple of Angkor Wat, dedicated to Vishnu, into a Buddhist pilgrimage site (Carter et al. 2019;Pou 1970), but also by the conversion of several temples within Angkor Thom through unique, localized methods of structural transformation. This included the installation of a uniform iconography of statuary and bas-reliefs depicting episodes from the life of the Buddha (Thompson 1998;see Giteau 1975), a process exemplified by the transformation of the western wall of the 11 th century Baphuon temple into a 65 m reclining Buddha (parinirvana) in the 15 th century (Leroy et al. 2015). ...
... These observations were verified by remote sensing data and LiDAR imagery collected by the Greater Angkor Project (Evans et al. , 2013. The resulting data analysis alongside extensive excavation campaigns across Greater Angkor helped model important trends of low-density agrarian expansion and collapse across the landscape based on population estimates, settlement patterns and agricultural trends, hydrology, import and exports of Chinese tradewares, ceramic typologies, and climate change (Brotherson 2019;Ea 2005;Fletcher et al. 2017;Carter et al. 2018Carter et al. , 2019Carter et al. , 2021Hall et al. 2021;Klassen et al. 2021aKlassen et al. , 2021bMarriner et al. 2018;Penny et al. 2007Penny et al. , 2019Stark et al. 2015a, b). Building on these investigations, the Angkor Vihara Project (AVP) completed ground survey of all known Buddhist Terrace sites within Angkor Thom between 2017 and 2018 (See SI Appendix Fig. S13). ...
The population of the Cambodian Angkorian Empire (802–1431 CE) and its namesake capital underwent a collective, gradual religious transition from Brahmano-Buddhism (Hindu and Mahayana practice) to Theravada Buddhism beginning in the mid/late-13th century CE. Marked by a material shift from temple-mountains to smaller prayer halls ((preah vihear or “Buddhist Terraces”) as the primary focal points of politico-religious organization, the initial “Theravadization” of Angkorian society primarily took place within the confines of the 12th century walled civic-ceremonial center of Angkor Thom. Within which, upwards of seventy Buddhist Terraces have thus far been identified, representing one of the most significant yet undocumented religious building programs in Angkorian history. Our study synthesizes the results of three field seasons (2017–2019) of Buddhist Terrace survey and excavation within Angkor Thom, and through radiometric and stratigraphic analysis we suggest that the dissemination of preah vihear began in earnest at Angkor during the 14th century. We also assess the structure and placement of Buddhist Terraces across Angkor Thom in relation to identified urban-spatial patterns and emerging sequences of site occupation, and contextualize this era of Theravada monastic dissemination within existing studies of Brahmano-Buddhist temple conversion at Angkor, the geopolitical decline of Angkor, and its aftermath.
... In disarray, King Ayutthaya abandoned the city and fled south bound. Recent excavations conducted by Carter et al. (2019) and her team in the vicinity of Angkor Wat reveals, notwithstanding the decline and the southward shift of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, Angkorians never left the locale as the excavation data evidently demonstrated the region's continued 'ideological importance and residential use' (Carter et al., 2019). Further, one of the many video clips posted on YouTube recently (2019, https://www.youtube. ...
... In disarray, King Ayutthaya abandoned the city and fled south bound. Recent excavations conducted by Carter et al. (2019) and her team in the vicinity of Angkor Wat reveals, notwithstanding the decline and the southward shift of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, Angkorians never left the locale as the excavation data evidently demonstrated the region's continued 'ideological importance and residential use' (Carter et al., 2019). Further, one of the many video clips posted on YouTube recently (2019, https://www.youtube. ...
Henri Mouhot, the French naturalist and explorer is always credited for rediscovering Angkor civilization though he was not the first foreigner to discover Angkor Wat of Cambodia. According to ancient China history, Zhenla (真腊អាណាចក្ រចេនឡា) is the ancient name for Cambodia, possibly in a Rajamandala existence-circle of kings which draws the comparison from ancient India emphasizing an otherwise system of kingdom allowing the coexistence of smaller king states physically-as a priori speculated by Oliver William Wolters. The true history of Angkor civilization can be pieced out by Yuan-era diplomat attaché Zhou Daguan's (Chou Ta Kuan/ 周达观) Zhenlafengtuji (真腊风土记A Record of Cambodia: The Land and its People or The Customs of Cambodia)-an eye-witnessed, original geographic account of the lives and customs of Cambodians during the Khmer Empire despite at times complacent in deliverance. The rediscovery of Angkor Wat in 1859, the restoration of its glories and popularization across the globe virtually owed ancient Chinese cultural dissemination from the anthropological aspect when Mouhot mistakenly dated Angkor formation to around the same era as Rome. The pivot points of this paper are to reintroduce the cultural contributions and geographic significance of ancient China, including its habitual, faithful recording practice to the ensuing generations through the restoration of Angkor civilization in a situation-inspired approach.
... What happened to such species as the people of Rome died and dispersed? What happened to the species living in Angkor Wat (Carter et al., 2019)? Or in the homes associated with Mayan and Aztec urbanizations? ...
Many of the choices humans make with regard to infrastructure, urban planning and other phenomena have impacts that will last thousands of years. This can readily be seen in modern cities in which contemporary streets run along street grids that were laid out thousands of years prior or even in which ancient viaducts still play a role. However, rarely do evolutionary biologists explicitly consider the future of life likely to be associated with the decisions we are making today. Here, we consider the evolutionary future of species in cities with a focus on the origin of lineages and species. We do so by adjusting evolutionary predictions from the theory of island biogeography so as to correspond to the unique features of cities as islands. Specifically, the species endemic to cities tend to be associated with the gray habitats in cities. Those habitats tend to be dominated by human bodies, pet bodies and stored food. It is among such species where the origin of new lineages is most likely, although most research on evolution in cities has focused on green habitats. We conclude by considering a range of scenarios for the far future and their implications for the origin of lineages and species.
... In recent work at Angkor (9-15th centuries AD), mounds on which houses were built were used as a proxy for a house or household space (Carter et al. , 2019Stark et al. 2015). These studies have used focused on smaller-scale excavation units (largely 1 × 2 m) over a larger geographic area, and while some postholes were identified, complete dwelling structures have not yet been uncovered. ...
Despite the ethnographic importance of the Southeast Asian house and household, an explicitly Southeast Asian “household archaeology” is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, archaeologists in Southeast Asia have undertaken excavations within habitation areas and residential spaces, identifying domestic debris, the partial remains of house structures, and activity areas. As a result, archaeologists of Southeast Asia have addressed many topics of relevance to those who use a household archaeology approach, including the identification and description of houses and household activities; the domestic economy; domestic ritual; diversity and variability both within houses as related to questions of identity, specifically gender and age, and between houses, especially as related to status; and identification of supra-household communities. In this review, I consider how archaeologists have addressed these themes using examples from a diverse set of geographic locations and time periods in mainland and island Southeast Asia. I conclude with suggestions for future research directions to continue building an archaeology of residential spaces and communities in Southeast Asia.
