Residential patterning at Angkor Wat
Miriam T. Stark1, Damian Evans2, Chhay Rachna3, Heng Piphal1
& Alison Carter4
Considerable attention has been devoted to
the architecture and art history of Cambodia’s
Angkor Wat temple in the last century.
Angkor 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
Phnom assumed to have been sacred precincts,
Penh 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
N revealed evidence for low-density residential
0 km 200 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.
Keywords: Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Angkor Wat, Angkorian period, residential planning,
LiDAR
Introduction
AngkorWat, as with most Angkorian temples, stood at the centre of a large walled enclosure.
Abundant scholarship exists on the art history and architectural details of Angkorian temples,
but little attention has focused on the structure and function of the large rectilinear spaces
that surround them (Fletcher et al. 2015: 1390). Consequently, historians’ models of
Angkorian temple enclosures as ‘sacred cities’ or ‘temple-cities’ (e.g. Cœdès 1941; Stern
1951; Coe 1957: 410; Jacques 1997: 138–42; cf. Pottier 2000; Evans 2007: 24–27 for
1 Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
(Email: miriams@hawaii.edu; hengpiphal@gmail.com)
2 The Siem Reap Centre, l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, Boeung Don Pa, Slorkram, Siem Reap, Cambodia
(Email: damian.evans@efeo.net)
3 Angkor International Centre of Research and Documentation, APSARA National Authority, Cambodia (Email:
chhayrachna@gmail.com)
4 Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 109 Davenport Hall MC-148, 607
South Mathews Avenue #109, Urbana, 61801 IL, USA (Email: alisonkrya@gmail.com)
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Miriam T. Stark et al.
historical reviews) have not been tested. Archaeological work is needed for such research
(Higham 2000: 357) and forms the subject of this study.
Most of the Angkorian state’s largest temple monuments were dedicated to specific
Hindu gods; Angkor Wat was dedicated to Vishnu (Fletcher et al. 2015: 1389). It was built
during a time when Saivism predominated and Angkorian Khmers absorbed Brahmanic
and Buddhist ideologies into their ritual practices (Briggs 1951: 194). Temples such as
Angkor Wat hosted ritual performances, collective and individual, for the benefit of the
deities enshrined within their walls. Priests, ritual specialists, pilgrims, ascetics and devotees
performed pūjā (or prayer rituals) to worship deities in temple ceremonies, festivals and
events. These activities required space and resources. Ritual specialists, attendants and
musicians organised ceremonies. Guards staffed the enclosure gates; gardeners cultivated
floral and spice offerings; cowherds provided milk and butter from their herd for rituals; and
the temple manager and accountants organised finances. Cooks, tailors, carpenters, weavers,
washermen, masons, architects and labourers also supported the temple’s infrastructure.
Identifying where these people lived and worked requires archaeological research in
forested settings with light surface artefact patterning. Evidence for use of the areas within
Angkorian temple enclosures has remained largely obscure. The Greater Angkor Project
(hereafter GAP) methodology combines analysis of remotely sensed data with field-based
archaeological investigations to explore Angkorian settlement patterns. This paper explores
residential planning during the Angkorian period (twelfth century AD) and the early part
of the post-Angkorian period (fifteenth through seventeenth centuries AD).
We couple GAP research with data from the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project
(hereafter LOMAP), whose 2003–2009 research investigated pre-Angkorian settlement
patterns (sixth to eighth centuries AD) in southern Cambodia. Both projects are located in
Cambodia’s lowlands, from which shared writing and art styles emerged by the sixth century
AD (Stark 2004, 2006a, 2006b; Heng 2013). This work, and research in neighbouring
north-east Thailand, suggests continuity across space and through time in basal and Khmer
settlement units (Welch 1997; Evans 2007). Tracing the long-term development of Khmer
settlement-forms offers insights into Angkorian residential planning within and near temple
enclosures.
Khmer settlement patterns
Researchers have studied Angkorian settlement and urbanism for nearly a century (e.g. Coe
1957; Groslier 1974; Pottier 2000, 2012; Gaucher 2004; Evans et al. 2007), and growing
evidence from the pre-Angkorian period indicates that Khmer socio-political organisation
extends back 200 years before the founding of Angkor (e.g. Vickery 1998). Figure 1 locates
AngkorWat,Greater Angkor and the LOMAP survey area. Few researchers have documented
Angkorian residential space (e.g. Gaucher 2003; Bâty 2005); none have studied households
as an analytical unit. As archaeologists define ‘household’ differently (Pluckhahn 2010:
338–39), we focus on co-residential groups that used occupation surfaces, features and
artefact assemblages associated with dwellings that stood on some or most mounds visible
throughout the outer enclosure (e.g. Nash 2009: 224).
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Figure 1. Map of Greater Angkor, including the sites mentioned: inset top left, regional view; inset bottom left, detail of the central urban area; data courtesy of NASA-SRTM, JICA,
Damian Evans and Christophe Pottier.
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Figure 2. Modal Khmer residential units: top left, a typical moated local temple site; top right, moated local temple site near
the high-water mark of the Tonle Sap lake at Angkor, surrounded by occupation mounds; bottom, digital terrain model of a
local temple surrounded by occupation mounds and ponds in the Roluos group at Angkor; derived from LiDAR data with
vegetation and other non-ground elements filtered from the scene, and with brighter areas indicating higher elevation; LiDAR
courtesy of KALC.
We use the term ‘settlement configuration’ to describe clusters of archaeological features
that recur across the landscape and circumscribe larger social arrangements (see also Evans
2007: 154–58). Settlement configurations are surface phenomena,measurable using ground-
survey techniques and airborne and spaceborne remote-sensing technologies. We readily
acknowledge that our conceptual framework overlooks both short-term and long-term
spatial activities described previously in the literature (e.g. Johnstone 2004; Stark 2006b).
At its height, the Angkorian state comprised a complex network of settlements, craft-
production centres, transportation linkages and resource areas whose landscape stretched
into modern-day Vietnam, Laos and Thailand (e.g. Groslier 1973; Pottier 1999; Stark
2006b; Fletcher 2009; Hendrickson 2010). From the ninth century AD onwards, most
Khmer urban space was characterised by a dispersed, low-density spatial structure that
created the sprawling urban complex of Greater Angkor (e.g. Fletcher 2012; Evans et al.
2013; Hawken 2013).
Traditional Khmer settlement was agrarian and rural in nature (Delvert 1961);
archaeological work in southern Cambodia indicates it may have substantial time-depth
(Figure 2). Four field seasons of survey by LOMAP covered 35km2 and identified three
modal settlement configurations for the pre-Angkorian period. The first involved small
clusters of mounds with associated ponds and moated mounds—or “moat-and-mound
temple-centred” configurations (Evans 2007: 24–26). These could be hamlets and conform
to the phum (village-level) administrative, settlement and work unit found today across
Cambodia (Delvert 1961). LOMAPalsomapped large sites withmultiplemoatedmounds or
mound-and-pond complexes (which we interpreted as phum or ‘villages’). A third settlement
form involved a series of dispersed moated mounds. Figure 3 illustrates examples of
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Figure 3. Khmer settlement patterns: top, features mapped in Preah Phkoam area (southern Cambodia, from Stark 2006b);
bottom, features mapped in the Greater Angkor region by Evans (2007; background data in both images is 1:25 000 scale
aerial photography acquired in 1992–1993 by FINNMAP.
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pre-Angkorian settlement units from theMekong delta and Angkorian settlement units from
the Tonle Sap area. All three modal forms include mounds and ponds (the modern Khmer
equivalent for pond is trapeang), around which several households lived to access fresh water
during the prolonged annual dry season, and which characterise rural Khmer settlement
today.
These early to mid-first millennium AD LOMAP settlement patterns contain
features that pre-Angkorian inscriptions describe, such as residential areas, water tanks,
paths/roads/causeways, groves and plantations, and moated temples (or prasat) (Jacob 1979:
413). Epigraphic data indicate some variability in dispersed settlement form; for example,
some villages were attached to particular rulers or temples (Sahai 1977: 47), while others
may have beenmore autonomous. Archaeological research in north-west Cambodia suggests
settlement pattern continuity into the Angkorian period (Evans 2007: 184).
Angkorian period urbanisation produced new settlement configurations: the orthogonal
grid, and perhaps also linear settlement along rivers, canals and roads (Pottier 2012). Some
relatively early temples in the Angkor region (e.g. Prei Monti, Preah Ko and Bakong) are also
surrounded bymultiple outer enclosures, but thesemay have primarily served non-habitation
functions. For example, the eighth- or ninth-century Bakong temple functioned as a largely
monastic (not residential) complex during its primary occupation, with residential mound
clusters distributed for some distance outside its moats in a low-density, dispersed pattern.
Other key ninth- to mid-eleventh-century temples that may have had associated residential
areas lacked ‘city’ enclosures (e.g. Bakheng, Ta Keo and Baphuon) (Pottier 2000, 2012: 21).
Twelfth-century Angkorian kings constructed a series of temple enclosures on large-scale
orthogonal grids (e.g. Gaucher 2003, 2004; Pottier 2012; Evans et al. 2013). Within its
moated and walled enclosure, the Angkor Wat orthogonal grid pattern divides the space
into blocks, each of which are further systematically divided into mounds and depressions
that functioned as ponds. Twentieth-century surface modifications to the enclosure have
obscured parts of the patterning, but we estimate that the Angkor Wat enclosure contained
approximately 283 mounds and 250–300 ponds. Field-based investigations during 2010
and 2013 examined the nature and time-depth of this Khmer grid-structured settlement
configuration from the twelfth century onwards.
The Angkor Wat 2010 and 2013 excavations
Excavations were undertaken at Angkor Wat from June to August 2010, and from June
to July 2013 in collaboration with the APSARA (Autorité pour la Protection du Site
et l’Aménagement de la Région d’Angkor) Authority. The 2010 work involved ground-
verifying GPS prospection patterns in the enclosure’s western section (Sonnemann et al.
2015: 1420).Work also focused on the less disturbed eastern enclosure and areas immediately
adjacent to Angkor Wat’s eastern moat, presented here as grid maps superimposed on a
LiDAR digital terrain model (Figure 4). The primary research objective was to characterise
the nature and dating of residential use through topographic and sketchmapping, systematic
coring and stratigraphic excavations.
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Figure 4. LiDAR image of formal grid system across Angkor Wat enclosure: top, merged digital terrain model and hillshade
model; bottom, digital terrain model with overlay of the grid reference system devised by Heng Piphal; brighter areas indicate
higher elevation; LiDAR courtesy of KALC.
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Fieldwork
Mapping in 2010 began in the north-east quadrant with a 40 × 40m grid, which revealed
a system of mounds and depressions. Few surface artefacts were visible, with the exception
of a few laterite masonry fragments near unit 7. Subsequent acquisition, processing and use
of LiDAR data for GAP 2013 fieldwork in the Angkor Wat enclosure confirmed this 2010
field-based mapping. The 2010 coring transects using east–west and north–south profiles of
the eastern enclosure helped identify intact archaeological deposits and build an area-wide
stratigraphic sequence. The 2013 coring of depressions was ground-truthing for evidence of
long-term standing water that would support the classification of these depressions as ponds.
Every depression visible in the LiDAR and DTM projection of the south-east quadrant was
sampled.
Fieldwork also included stratigraphic excavations of 25 trenches (6 in 2010; 19 in 2013)
on mounds, along mound slopes, in depressions and adjacent to walls; 11 trenches sampled
the tops of mounds. In 2013, three trenches were also excavated east of the outer wall
and moat, where LiDAR imagery revealed a rectangular enclosure. Figures 5 and 6 identify
trench locations in the north-east and south-east quadrants within the walled enclosure, and
Figure 4 identifies trench locations in this outer eastern enclosure.
Stratigraphy
Figures 7 and 8 illustrate the four layers that characterised most trenches across the eastern
enclosure. Layer 1, an organic and loamy topsoil, whose basal section contained some cultural
materials; layer 2, a cultural matrix that contained ceramics (earthenware, stoneware and
high-fired Chinese tradewares), some postholes, flat-lying stones or pot breaks in one or two
sub-layers that represent surfaces; layer 3, a thick cultural lens of sandy clay with manganese
inclusions; and layer 4, the natural substrate, which is even sandier clay. Trenches closest to
the temple contained sandstone-chip construction-related debris as part of layer 2; trenches
abutting the enclosure wall had the lowest artefact densities in layer 2. Layer 3 appears to
represent the initial construction of the mound-pond grid structure and is associated with
the temple’s construction. Layer 2 is associated with the reign of Suryavarman II and use of
his Vishnu temple. No pre-Angkorian signature was identified through the extensive coring
and trench excavations in the eastern temple enclosure.
Accordingly, layers 2 and 3 are the focus of this discussion. Layer 2 in many trenches
contained charcoal flecks, ceramics and recycled architectural stone, and possibly recycled
architectural ceramics. Trench 3 yielded an earthenware stove (or brazier (Cremin 2009: 81))
fragment. Most earthenware sherds (except a single stove fragment) derived from utilitarian
vessels such as cooking pots and water jars; some sherds that showed evidence of wear
or sooting were probably cooking pots. Stoneware sherds derived from jars, baluster and
pedestal vases, are associated with Angkorian-period occupation and are also illustrated in the
bas-reliefs of the twelfth-century Bayon temple. Khmer glazed stonewares were recovered
across the Angkorian landscape, and include storage jars, boxes, bowls and bottles (Guy
1997: 55–58; Cort 2000: 98–108; Chhay et al. 2009, 2013; Ea 2010).
Small fragments of high-fired Chinese ‘tradeware’ ceramics were also recovered during the
excavations. Chinese tradewares recovered from archaeological sites across Greater Angkor
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Figure 5. Comparison of maps of the north-eastern quadrant of the Angkor Wat enclosure, from before and after the 2012
LiDAR mission (Evans et al. 2013). Top, ground survey (courtesy of Shawn Fehrenbach), superimposed onto image (from
Sonnemann et al. 2006). Bottom, merged digital terrain model and hillshade model derived from the 2012 LiDAR data
with vegetation and other non-ground elements filtered from the scene.
date primarily from the Northern Song (AD 960–1279) through to the Ming (AD 1368–
1644) dynasties (Ea 2005; Cremin 2006). Some particular Chinese production centres,
such as the Guangdong kilns, manufacture goods that probably served as diplomatic trade
products (Wong 1979), and have been recovered in elite and non-elite contexts throughout
the Angkorian realm (Wong 2010). Lower quality Chinese bowls, boxes and globular vases
are also associated with residential sites in the Angkor region (Groslier 1981: 230–31).
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Figure 6. Locations for all excavation trenches in eastern quadrant excavated in 2010 and 2013; grid lines identified through
LiDAR are indicated in red (image courtesy of Heng Piphal).
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Figure 7. General stratigraphic sequence in eastern portion of Angkor Wat enclosure, illustrating layer 2 as occupational
layer; layer 3 as possible construction layer (note trench 17, north wall), and pond feature in trench 24b, south wall (image
courtesy of Chhay Rachna).
Figure 8. Photograph of trench 17 north wall.
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Age of the habitation deposits
Khmer people used the Angkor Wat enclosure during and after the Angkorian period.
Angkor, including Angkor Wat, housed Buddhist sanctuaries that attracted pilgrims from
various parts of Asia during the post-Angkorian or ‘middle Khmer’ period (Loureiro 2005:
218; Sonnemann 2011: 44). One of several sixteenth- to eighteenth-century inscriptions
found on walls and pillars at Angkor Wat, dating to 1579, calls the temple Visnuloka and
records the restoration of the temple’s walls and roof (Lewitz 1972: 109). The identification
of a seventeenth-century Japanesemap of theAngkorWat temple, and other post-fourteenth-
century remains, underscores Angkor Wat’s centrality as a religious centre for centuries after
the Angkorian capital moved south-east (Thompson 1997: 28–32; Sonnemann 2011: 137–
38).
The 2010 and 2013 excavations produced both Angkorian and post-Angkorian materials
in most trenches; the trenches along the enclosure’s wall contained more post-Angkorian
material. Two trends are clear in Figure 9, which presents radiocarbon dates from the
2010 excavations to characterise the occupation history of the Angkor Wat enclosure. First,
locations near the temple and in the central north-east quadrant (i.e. unit 7) were used
during the twelfth-century AD construction and initial use of the Angkor Wat temple.
This pattern, coupled with LiDAR evidence for contemporaneous use of areas beyond the
enclosure’s eastern moat (Fletcher et al. 2015: 1393), defines the broad area that included
Angkor Wat and its environs. Secondly, post-Angkorian Khmers also lived in the enclosure,
as evidenced by radiometric dates (trenches 5, 6 & 8) and the recovery of Ming period
tradewares. The fifteenth-century political transformation of the Angkorian state did not
therefore entail an abandonment of the Angkor Wat temple area, as often assumed (see also
Brotherson 2015).
Discussion
Angkorian Khmers laid their grid before or during the construction of the Angkor Wat
temple, and this grid structured residences, and land-use, within the walled enclosure around
the temple. Most sampled mounds produced archaeological evidence of residential activities
such as cooking and house construction.Multiple population-modellingmethods, including
those using ethnographically based estimates of median Khmer house and household
size (Delvert 1961:186), produce similar numbers; thirteenth-century Chinese reports of
Angkorian Cambodia also described multi-household use of ponds (Zhou trans. 2007: 80;
Hanus et al. in press). At its peak, the enclosure may have housed between c. 3000 and 4300
residents, and occupation at Angkor Wat continued well into the post-Angkorian period.
No significant variation was found in ceramic assemblages from different mounds to
suggest social stratification; little stratigraphic variability across the cultural layers and
sparse organic debris (such as faunal remains) indicates rather light habitation. This pattern
contrasts markedly with deep deposits from earlier residential sites, as with the protohistoric
and pre-Angkorian settlement of Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia (e.g. Stark et al.
1999; Stark 2000; Stark & Bong 2001). If the enclosures served largely ritual functions,
then residence within their walls may have been restricted to elites (perhaps the royal court)
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Figure 9. Probability distributions of (2σ ) calibrated radiocarbon samples from GAP excavations at Angkor Wat (courtesy of
David Brotherson), with distinct phases highlighted in pale orange; left, Angkor period construction and use of the enclosure
and surrounding area; right, post-Angkorian use of the enclosure from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries).
and a range of full-time temple personnel: Brahmins and priests, temple administrators,
temple attendants and support population tasked with maintenance (Coe 1957: 410).
Alternatively, the Angkor Wat enclosure could have housed both full-time temple
personnel and also temporary staff, who resided at AngkorWat for two weeks each month in
the ‘fortnight-on’, ‘fortnight-off’ pattern of work recorded in numerous Angkorian period
inscriptions from smaller temples. Time is reckoned according to the waxing and waning
of the moon in three separate inscriptions: K. 218 (Cœdès 1937: 45–53), K. 254 (Cœdès
1937: 180–93) and K. 809 (Cœdès 1927: 37–46; also see Sahai 2012: 239–42). Working
parties, if at a state temple, lived in villages outside the enclosure and alternated their use of
the temple residential areas, producing a light habitation pattern. This pattern was practised
at some pre-Angkorian temple complexes (described in K. 582 (Cœdès 1927: 200–201),
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whose lodgings are labelled with a Sanskrit-Khmer compound term āvāsa kñum (Sahai
2012: 238).
In one scenario, only a portion of the staff lived within the Angkor Wat enclosure, either
continuously or by rotation, and most staff lived elsewhere. The Angkor Wat system would
then resemble that described for Ta Prohm, where only some of the 12 640 staff resided
within the enclosure (e.g. Cœdès 1906), which is more than six times the number of staff
than residential features identified in the Ta Prohm enclosure by LiDAR survey (Evans &
Fletcher 2015). No twelfth-century epigraphic evidence for workgroups or enclosure use is
available for the Angkor Wat temple enclosure, so the fortnightly work programmes could
already have ceased by then.
GAP research indicates that residential patterning associated with Angkor Wat extends to
areas beyond the temple enclosure walls to the east: excavations in 2013 produced similar
stratigraphic and artefact patterning to that obtained from trenches within the temple’s
eastern enclosure. A series of interlocking archaeological features that cover a 35km2 area
south of the temple enclosure may also be associated with residential patterning within the
enclosure (Evans et al. 2013: 2; Evans & Fletcher 2015: 1411–14).
Conclusions
GAP research at Angkor Wat has produced three main findings. First, the temple enclosure
area was systematically subdivided into an orthogonal grid; each ‘block’ contained a formal
array of occupation mounds and ponds throughout the enclosure, except for the area
flanking the western causeway from the West Gopura to the western edge of the main
temple (Sonnemann et al. 2015). Second, this mound-pond residential pattern, in slightly
varying forms, emerged at least as early as the sixth century, and finds parallels in other
pre-industrial, low-density agro-urban landscapes (Isendahl 2012; Isendahl & Smith 2013).
Finally, light residential patterning characterises excavated portions of this orthogonal grid.
Our findings have significant implications for understanding the structure and chronology
of Angkor Wat’s occupation. No evidence exists for exclusive elite occupation of Angkor
Wat’s temple enclosure, whether political-economic or religious (priests or Brahmins). In
contrast, our work supports a model in which temple personnel of modest material wealth
occupied relatively insubstantial, perishable structures located on mounds in the immediate
vicinity of the temple. Excavations also indicate that the Angkorian occupation occurred
in three phases before the sixteenth-century Khmer royalty returned to Angkor Wat. These
were: during the temple’s construction phase; throughout the reign of Suryavarman II; and in
the post-Angkorian period (albeit with a much reduced post-fifteenth-century population).
Our collective research suggests that the formally planned mound-pond system within
the Angkor Wat enclosure did not appear sui generis, but is instead the outcome of a
long-term residential logic, and its initial structure existed, in one form or another, by the
sixth century and through to the eighth century AD. Even as this gradual formalisation
of the structure of the built environment was taking place in Angkor from the eleventh to
twelfth centuries, the antecedent pattern—of clusters of mounds and ponds scattered across
the wider landscape, often centred on a local shrine (or prasat)—persisted across Greater
Angkor. Use of airborne laser-scanning data, together with archaeological excavation, has
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allowed us to elucidate long-term patterns of continuity and change in the development of
Khmer residence patterns, encompassing multiple scales from that of the broader landscape
right down to the level of the individual household. It has also redefined the use of residential
space within the outer enclosure of Angkor Wat.
Acknowledgements
Gracious thanks are extended to the APSARA Authority for permission to undertake field investigations in the
Angkor Wat enclosure, including HE Bun Narith, HE Ros Borath and An Sopheap, which were undertaken
under ARC grant DP1092663. We thank So Malay and Martin King for administrative support, and GAP
2010 and 2013 crew members, whose labour produced this research. Damian Evans drafted Figures 1–5.
Martin King and Alex Morrison provided additional graphical expertise; conversations with Christophe Pottier,
Roland Fletcher, Ea Darith, Ian Lowman, David Brotherson and Paul Lavy were exceptionally helpful. Thanks
also to Li Baoping, John Miksic and Louise Cort for identifications of Chinese tradewares in the 2010
excavated materials. We thank the PT McElhanney, Indonesia, company for its contribution to the LiDAR
acquisition, which was funded by eight institutions in the Khmer Archaeology LiDAR Consortium: APSARA
Authority, the University of Sydney, l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, Société Concessionaire d’Aéroport,
the Hungarian Southeast Asian Research Institute, Japan-APSARA Safeguarding Angkor, the Archaeology and
Development Foundation and the World Monuments Fund. All mistakes are the responsibility of the principal
author.
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