Carter, Alison Kyra

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27715

Alison Carter is an anthropological archaeologist with an interest in the political economy and evolution of complex societies in Southeast Asia. She is currently Principal Investigator and Co-Director of P'teah Cambodia (ProjecT Excavating Ancient Households), a project investigating Pre-Angkorian, Angkorian, and Post-Angkorian residential spaces in Battambang Province. Other research interests include the archaeology of East and South Asia, materials analysis and LA‐ICP­‐MS, craft technology and specialization, ritual and religion, trade and exchange, and bead studies.

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Browsing Carter, Alison Kyra by Author "Heng, Piphal"

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    Diachronic modeling of the population within the medieval Greater Angkor Region settlement complex
    (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2021-05-07) Klassen, Sarah; Evans, Damian H.; Ortman, Scott; Stark, Miriam T.; Loyless, Alyssa A.; Polkinghorne, Martin; Heng, Piphal; Hill, Michael; Wijker, Pelle; Niles-Weed, Jonathan; Marriner, Gary P.; Pottier, Christophe; Fletcher, Roland J.; Carter, Alison Kyra
    Angkor is one of the world’s largest premodern settlement complexes (9th to 15th centuries CE), but to date, no comprehensive demographic study has been completed, and key aspects of its population and demographic history remain unknown. Here, we combine lidar, archaeological excavation data, radiocarbon dates, and machine learning algorithms to create maps that model the development of the city and its population growth through time. We conclude that the Greater Angkor Region was home to approximately 700,000 to 900,000 inhabitants at its apogee in the 13th century CE. This granular, diachronic, paleodemographic model of the Angkor complex can be applied to any ancient civilization.
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    The evolution of agro-urbanism: A case study from Angkor, Cambodia
    (Elsevier, 2021-09) Carter, Alison Kyra; Klassen, Sarah; Stark, Miriam T.; Polkinghorne, Martin; Heng, Piphal; Evans, Damian; Chhay, Rachna
    The vast agro-urban settlements that developed in the humid tropics of Mesoamerica and Asia contained both elite civic-ceremonial spaces and sprawling metropolitan areas. Recent studies have suggested that both local autonomy and elite policies facilitated the development of these settlements; however, studies have been limited by a lack of detail in considering how, when, and why these factors contributed to the evolution of these sites. In this paper, we use a fine-grained diachronic analysis of Angkor’s landscape to identify both the state-level policies and infrastructure and bottom-up organization that spurred the growth of Angkor as the world’s most extensive pre-industrial settlement complex. This degree of diachronic detail is unique for the ancient world. We observe that Angkor’s low-density metropolitan area and higher-density civic-ceremonial center grew at different rates and independently of one another. While local historical factors contributed to these developments, we argue that future comparative studies might identify similar patterns.
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    Temple occupation and the tempo of collapse at Angkor Wat, Cambodia
    (National Academy of Sciences, 2019-06-03) Stark, Miriam T.; Quintus, Seth; Zhuang, Yijie; Wang, Hong; Heng, Piphal; Chhay, Rachna; Carter, Alison Kyra
    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 protracted and complex process than historians imagined. Excavation data and Bayesian modeling on a corpus of 16 radiocarbon dates in particular demand a revised chronology for the Angkor Wat landscape. It was initially in use from the 11th century CE with subsequent habitation until the 13th century CE. Following this period, there is a gap in our dates, which we hypothesize signifies a change in the use of the occupation mounds during this period. However, Angkor Wat was never completely abandoned, as the dates suggest that the mounds were in use again in the late 14th–early 15th centuries until the 17th or 18th centuries CE. This break in dates points toward a reorganization of Angkor Wat’s enclosure space, but not during the historically recorded 15th century collapse. Our excavation data are consistent with multiple lines of evidence demonstrating the region’s continued ideological importance and residential use, even after the collapse and shift southward of the polity’s capital. We argue that fine-grained chronological analysis is critical to building local historical sequences and illustrate how such granularity adds nuance to how we interpret the tempo of organizational change before, during, and after the decline of Angkor.
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    Urbanism and Residential Patterning in Angkor
    (Taylor and Francis, 2018-09-01) Heng, Piphal; Stark, Miriam T.; Chhay, Rachna; Evans, Damian; Carter, Alison Kyra
    The Khmer Empire (9th–15th centuries a.d.), centered on the Greater Angkor region, was the most extensive political entity in the history of mainland Southeast Asia. Stone temples constructed by Angkorian kings and elites were widely assumed to have been loci of ritual as well as habitation, though the latter has been poorly documented archaeologically. In this paper, we present the results of two field seasons of excavation at the temple site of Ta Prohm. Using LiDAR data to focus our excavations, we offer evidence for residential occupation within the temple enclosure from before the 11th century a.d. until the 14th century. A comparison with previous work exploring habitation areas within the Angkor Wat temple enclosure highlights similarities and differences between the two temples. We argue that temple habitation was a key component of the Angkorian urban system and that investigating this unique form of urbanism expands current comparative research on the diversity of ancient cities.