Carter, Alison Kyra

Permanent URI for this collection

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.

Browse

Browsing Carter, Alison Kyra by Subject "Cambodia"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Angkor Borei and Protohistoric Trade Networks: A View from the Glass and Stone Bead Assemblage
    (University of Hawai'i Press, 2021) Carter, Alison Kyra; Dussubieux, Laure; Stark, Miriam T.; Gilg, H. Albert
    Angkor Borei, Cambodia was an important urban center related to the early first millennium C.E. polity known as Funan. Excavations in the protohistoric period Vat Komnou Cemetery site uncovered over 1300 glass and stone beads, which are important material indicators of trade. In this article, we review data from earlier studies and add new previously unpublished data on glass and stone beads from this collection as well as previously unpublished glass compositional analyses from the nearby site of Oc Eo, Vietnam. Examinations of the glass beads highlight the presence of large quantities of high alumina mineral soda glass associated with Sri Lankan or South Indian bead production as well as smaller quantities of other glass types in circulation throughout Southeast Asia. Compositional and morphological studies of agate/carnelian beads show strong affinities with the Indian bead industry, while the garnet beads came from raw material sources in southern India. Overall, Angkor Borei's bead collection shows strong contacts with different regions of South Asia. Comparison with the bead assemblages of other contemporaneous sites demonstrate strong affinities with sites farther inland, such as Phum Snay and Prei Khmeng, Cambodia and Ban Non Wat, Thailand rather than other maritime coastal sites in Southeast Asia. We argue that the stone and glass beads at Angkor Borei are related to intensified interaction with South Asia and that elites at Angkor Borei used these exotic prestige goods to build alliances with sites farther inland forming an intraregional exchange network we call the Mekong Interaction Sphere.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    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.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Residential patterning at Angkor Wat
    (Cambridge University Press, 2015-12-07) Stark, Miriam T.; Evans, Damian; Rachna, Chhay; Piphal, Heng; Carter, Alison Kyra
    Considerable attention has been devoted to the architecture and art history of Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple in the last century. There has, however, been little research on the functions and internal organisation of the large rectangular enclosure surrounding the temple. Such enclosures have long been assumed to have been sacred precincts, or perhaps ‘temple-cities’: work exploring the archaeological patterning for habitation within them has been limited. The results of LiDAR survey and excavation have now revealed evidence for low-density residential occupation in these areas, possibly for those servicing the temple. Recent excavations within the enclosure challenge our traditional understanding of the social hierarchy of the Angkor Wat community and show that the temple precinct, bounded by moat and wall, may not have been exclusively the preserve of the wealthy or the priestly elite.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    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.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    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.