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Piphal Heng

University of California, Los Angeles, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Post-Doc

University of Hawaii at Manoa, Anthropology, ABD

University of Hawaii at Manoa, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Interim Associate Director

Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Post-Doc

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I currently a postdoctoral scholar at UCLA-Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. I received my degree in archaeology from the Cambodia's Royal University of Fine Arts in 2002 and my MA and PhD degree in Anthropology from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (2018). I was a ACLS-Robert H. N. Ho postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies & Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University from 2019 to 2021. My archaeological research themes include religious change, urbanism, settlement patterns, political economy, and sociopolitical organizational shift. I am also interested in the intersection between heritage management, collaborative/public archaeology, knowledge production, and urban development. My current project explores the transformation of urban and rural settlements in response to the demographic and political changes that took place with the adoption of Theravada Buddhism in Angkor (14th-18th century Cambodia).

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Royal University of Phnom Penh

hien sopheaktra

University of battambang

University Of Cambodia

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Elevator & Generator Supplier_Cambodia

University of Cambridge

Louisa J . M . Jansen

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

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Papers by Piphal Heng

Angkor and the Mekong River: Settlement, Resources, Mobility, and Power

Routledge eBooks, Apr 5, 2023

‘Invisible Cambodians’: Knowledge Production in the History of Angkorian Archaeology

Routledge eBooks, Apr 5, 2023

More than a century after the 'collapse' of Angkor and the Khmer Empire, 16th-century King Ang Ch... more More than a century after the 'collapse' of Angkor and the Khmer Empire, 16th-century King Ang Chan returned to Angkor Wat to restore it as a political and spiritual centre and rededicate other temples to Theravada Buddhism (Groslier 1985 , 16-19; Thompson 2004a , 205; 2006 , 143-48). Khmers continued to curate and invigorate their Angkorian heritage through ancestral worship and Theravada Buddhist practice through the mid-19th century; for example, King Ang Duong tried to revitalise Cambodia in the face of encroachments by Thailand and Vietnam by restoring (and building new) Buddhist pagodas in Oudong (Edwards 2007 , 132). This cyclical Cambodian worldview, which reinvigorates the past to generate new futures, contrasts markedly with progressive, linear-based approaches to the past that characterise most Western scholarship on the Angkorian world (Thompson 2006 , 151-52). Renovating and even transforming 'living' heritage sites continues to be a central concern for Buddhists in both Thailand and Cambodia (e.g., Keyes 1991 ; Byrne 1995). Despite repeated calls for diverse perspectives on Cambodia's premodern past and vitality in Khmer-driven scholarship, Cambodian voices remain under-represented in discussions of the Angkorian world. Contemporary heritage management in Cambodia involves multiple museums, World Heritage sites, and heritage units that hundreds of professionals with BAs in Archaeology from the Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA) manage. Despite this surge in local capacity since the mid-1990s, Cambodian scholarship-like Southeast Asia-based archaeological scholarship more generally (Shoocongdej 2011 , 722)-remains nearly invisible in global scholarship. This chapter complements previous work (e.g., Carter et al. 2014 ; Heng and Phon 2017) and explores why Cambodian scholarship still plays a marginal role in shaping understandings of the Angkorian world by focusing on Cambodia's educational infrastructure and knowledge production during its 20th-century 'modernisation' period. We argue that four interrelated process explain Cambodians' near-invisibility: (1) frictions caused by competing Western and Khmer perceptions of heritage; (2) intellectual hegemony by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) and constructing narratives of Cambodia's aesthetic legacy (Muan 2001) and its Angkorian past; (3) mid-20th-century desire to 'modernise' Cambodia through Khmer studies that emphasised Buddhism, Khmer language and literature, and folk life; and (4) a lack of colonial commitment to capacity-building in Cambodian heritage 3 'INVISIBLE CAMBODIANS' Knowledge Production in the History of Angkorian Archaeology Heng Piphal , Seng Sonetra and Nhim Sotheavin 'Invisible Cambodians' 43 scholarship. Colonial scholarship on Cambodia's premodern past was largely divorced from the consciousness of the Khmer public, who viewed their heritage as a living religious tradition blending Buddhism, chronicular evidence, and folklore. Examining institutional histories and disjuncture between Khmer and foreign approaches to the past highlights complex relationships between archaeology, heritage management and education, colonised knowledge production, and the nation-state. Heritage and Archaeology in the Context of Khmer Studies Cambodia entered the 20th century with a cultural renaissance and modernisation that included an expansion of education beyond the traditional pagoda-based structure. New academic institutions that were founded (e.g., Royal Library, Buddhist Institute) became crucibles for the emergence of Kambuja Suriya journal, the fi rst Khmer dictionary, the Association of Khmer Writers , and the fi rst Khmer political journal (Sruk Khmaer and later Nagaravatta) (Clayton 1995 ; Edwards 2004 ; Harris 2005 , 105-56). Intense cultural and political exchanges between Cambodia and the French Protectorate characterised this period, as the French and the Khmers positioned themselves as rescuers of the descendants of Angkor to protecting their autonomy from encroaching neighbours of Thailand and Vietnam. Khmer local responses to geopolitics were more responsible for this renaissance than were western pressures to modernise (e.g., Edwards 2007 ; Hansen 2007). Khmers increasingly linked Khmer literary traditions, Buddhism, and their Angkorian past to an emerging Khmer national identity, and Angkor Wat became the symbol of the new Cambodia (Thompson 2004b , 2006 , 2016). French colonial scholars pushed back against this local narrative, denigrating contemporary Khmer literature and highlighting the rupture between modern Cambodia and Angkor through contrasting the 'degenerate' post-Angkor period with its Theravada Buddhist literature with Angkor's period of regional dominance (e.g., Coedès 1931). Some also charged that Khmers lacked self-expression altogether (Pou 1980 , 142). These colonial critics misunderstood Khmer literature, which-like Khmer education and knowledge production more broadlywas deeply enmeshed with Buddhism, the monarchy, and a patron-client system (e.g., Ayres 2000 ; Clayton 1995 , 2; Chigas 2000). They also underestimated the local respect for Khmer cultural heritage, which King Norodom explained in 1891 in opposition to a French request to remove statuary from Khmer temples:

The Angkorian House

Routledge eBooks, Apr 5, 2023

Diachronic modeling ofthe population within the medieval Greater Angkor Region settlement complex

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), May 7, 2021

Prasat and Pteah: Habitation within Angkor Wat's temple enclosure

Archaeological Research in Asia

The Angkor empire (9-15th centuries CE) was one of mainland Southeast Asia's major civilizations,... more The Angkor empire (9-15th centuries CE) was one of mainland Southeast Asia's major civilizations, with a 3000 km 2 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.

The Temple Economy of Angkor

Routledge eBooks, Apr 5, 2023

Form, structure and long-term Angkorian urbanism: A view from the Kok Phnov site (9th–10th century CE)

Archaeological Research in Asia, 2022

The capital of Angkor remained the powerbase of the Khmer polity for more than 600 years, indicat... more 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 forcesas well as state design and topographycrafted 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.

Landscape, upland-lowland, community, and economy of the mekong river (6th-8th century CE): case studies from the Pre-Angkorian centers of Thala Borivat and Sambor

World Archaeology, 2022

Southeast Asian archaeological research often emphasizes upland-lowland dynamics in the developme... more Southeast Asian archaeological research often emphasizes upland-lowland dynamics in the development of premodern complex societies. This paper tracks upland-lowland dynamics in Pre-Angkorian (6th-8th century CE) Cambodia by focusing on land-use and economy along the Mekong River. Proto-urban settlements emerged throughout the Tonle Sap and Mekong Delta alluvial plains but also appeared at key centers such as Thala Borivat, Sambor, and Wat Phu along the Mekong River's more narrow corridors. The diversified economy that involved movement of forest resources and food between these tropical upland-lowland ecotones, observed during the colonial period, emerged by the 6th-7th centuries CE and coincided with political consolidations during the Pre-Angkor period. Analysis of this region suggests that non-Khmer (ethnic minority) swidden agricultural groups who now dominate the uplands have premodern roots in the region. Using upland-lowland settings to study tropical habitation, this archaeological study offers a riskreduction exchange-based model for understanding Cambodia's premodern Mekong organization.

The Position of Cambodian Archaeology in Current Sociopolitical Context

Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology, 2017

This paper aims to provide a glimpse into the sociopolitical settings of current archaeology in C... more This paper aims to provide a glimpse into the sociopolitical settings of current archaeology in Cambodia. The archaeological training got a late start in Cambodia, beginning in 1968, and its first graduates were forced to confront a series of complications: social unrest, civil wars, and lootings. In the 1990s, National and international efforts revived and trained a new generation of archaeologists. The setting in which this new generation practices, unlike their predecessors, is not one of warfare but rather of continued lootings and developments that result in a large number of archaeological sites being destroyed for prime real estates and new road constructions without proper salvage research. However, in a few cases, some archaeologists are employed merely as salaried workers and data collectors for their international counterparts. Though the majority of research continues to be in Angkor and around large monuments, some projects have shifted focus to study early periods loca...

Mind the Gap: Occupation at Angkor Wat and Implications for the decline of Angkor

Organizational Change in Political Economy and Ideology: Transition from the Early Historic to Pre-Angkorian Period Cambodia, Viewed from Thala Borivat

Diachronic modeling of the population within the medieval Greater Angkor Region settlement complex

Science Advances, 2021

The Greater Angkor Region was home to approximately 700,000 to 900,000 inhabitants at its apogee ... more

The Khmer did not live by rice alone: Archaeobotanical investigations at Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

Archaeological Research in Asia, 2020

The Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influen... more The Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influence across mainland Southeast Asia and is now one of the most archaeologically visible polities due to its expansive religious building works. This paper presents archaeobotanical evidence from two of the most renowned Angkorian temples largely associated with kings and elites, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. But it focuses on the people that dwelt within the temple enclosures, some of whom were involved in the daily functions of the temple. Archaeological work indicates that temple enclosures were areas of habitation within the Angkorian urban core and the temples and their enclosures were ritual, political, social, and economic landscapes. This paper provides the first attempt to reconstruct some aspects of the lives of the non-elites living within the temple enclosures by examining the archaeobotanical evidence, both macroremains and phytoliths, from residential contexts and data derived from inscriptions and Zhou Daguan's historical account dating to the 13th century CE. Research indicates that plants found within the temple enclosure of Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat were grown for ritual or medicinal use, and also formed important components of the diet and household economy.

Residential patterning at Angkor Wat

Antiquity, 2015

Considerable attention has been devoted to the architecture and art history of Cambodia's Ang... more 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.

Post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Archaeology in

Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2014

Archaeological Report on the Thnal Mrech Kiln Site (TMK 02), Anlong Thom, Phnom Kulen, Cambodia

... 1, June 2003, www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm. Asia Research Institute Editorial Committee Maz... more

Centralized power/decentralized production? Angkorian stoneware and the southern production complex of Cheung Ek, Cambodia

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2021

Despite the composition close to glassy forming alloys, face centered cubic (FCC) Co81.8Si9.1B9.1... more Despite the composition close to glassy forming alloys, face centered cubic (FCC) Co81.8Si9.1B9.1, designed based on Co9B atomic cluster (polyhedral), are synthesized as singlephase ribbons successfully. These ribbons, with grain sizes of ca. 92 nm, show supreme ductility and strong orientation along (111), which couples with shape anisotropy leading to high magnetocrystalline anisotropy comparable to Co rich Co-Pt nanoscale thin films, with a coercivity of 430 Oe and squareness of 0.82 at room temperature. The stability and magnetic behaviors of the phase are discussed based on experimental electronic structure. This work not only develops low cost Co-based materials for hard magnetic applications, but also extends the atomic cluster model developed for amorphous alloys into the design of new crystalline materials.

$Figure 1. PXRD pattern (a) and TEM observation (b) of as-cast Cosi.sSi9.1B9.1 ribbons. The inset in (a) shows pictures of ribbons and the Co9B cluster extracted from Co23Bo (yellow balls for B and blue balls for Co). The inset in (b) gives the selected area electron diffraction corresponding to the observed zone.$

Changing Angkorian Stoneware Production Modes: Bang Kong Kiln and Thnal Mrech Kiln

The Angkorian city: From Hariharalaya to Yashodharapura

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific r... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. The Angkorian city: From Hariharalaya to Yashodharapura Miriam Stark, Alison Carter, Piphal Heng, Rachna Chhay, Damian Evans

The evolution of agro-urbanism: A case study from Angkor, Cambodia

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Angkor and the Mekong River: Settlement, Resources, Mobility, and Power

Routledge eBooks, Apr 5, 2023

‘Invisible Cambodians’: Knowledge Production in the History of Angkorian Archaeology

Routledge eBooks, Apr 5, 2023

More than a century after the 'collapse' of Angkor and the Khmer Empire, 16th-century King Ang Ch... more More than a century after the 'collapse' of Angkor and the Khmer Empire, 16th-century King Ang Chan returned to Angkor Wat to restore it as a political and spiritual centre and rededicate other temples to Theravada Buddhism (Groslier 1985 , 16-19; Thompson 2004a , 205; 2006 , 143-48). Khmers continued to curate and invigorate their Angkorian heritage through ancestral worship and Theravada Buddhist practice through the mid-19th century; for example, King Ang Duong tried to revitalise Cambodia in the face of encroachments by Thailand and Vietnam by restoring (and building new) Buddhist pagodas in Oudong (Edwards 2007 , 132). This cyclical Cambodian worldview, which reinvigorates the past to generate new futures, contrasts markedly with progressive, linear-based approaches to the past that characterise most Western scholarship on the Angkorian world (Thompson 2006 , 151-52). Renovating and even transforming 'living' heritage sites continues to be a central concern for Buddhists in both Thailand and Cambodia (e.g., Keyes 1991 ; Byrne 1995). Despite repeated calls for diverse perspectives on Cambodia's premodern past and vitality in Khmer-driven scholarship, Cambodian voices remain under-represented in discussions of the Angkorian world. Contemporary heritage management in Cambodia involves multiple museums, World Heritage sites, and heritage units that hundreds of professionals with BAs in Archaeology from the Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA) manage. Despite this surge in local capacity since the mid-1990s, Cambodian scholarship-like Southeast Asia-based archaeological scholarship more generally (Shoocongdej 2011 , 722)-remains nearly invisible in global scholarship. This chapter complements previous work (e.g., Carter et al. 2014 ; Heng and Phon 2017) and explores why Cambodian scholarship still plays a marginal role in shaping understandings of the Angkorian world by focusing on Cambodia's educational infrastructure and knowledge production during its 20th-century 'modernisation' period. We argue that four interrelated process explain Cambodians' near-invisibility: (1) frictions caused by competing Western and Khmer perceptions of heritage; (2) intellectual hegemony by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) and constructing narratives of Cambodia's aesthetic legacy (Muan 2001) and its Angkorian past; (3) mid-20th-century desire to 'modernise' Cambodia through Khmer studies that emphasised Buddhism, Khmer language and literature, and folk life; and (4) a lack of colonial commitment to capacity-building in Cambodian heritage 3 'INVISIBLE CAMBODIANS' Knowledge Production in the History of Angkorian Archaeology Heng Piphal , Seng Sonetra and Nhim Sotheavin 'Invisible Cambodians' 43 scholarship. Colonial scholarship on Cambodia's premodern past was largely divorced from the consciousness of the Khmer public, who viewed their heritage as a living religious tradition blending Buddhism, chronicular evidence, and folklore. Examining institutional histories and disjuncture between Khmer and foreign approaches to the past highlights complex relationships between archaeology, heritage management and education, colonised knowledge production, and the nation-state. Heritage and Archaeology in the Context of Khmer Studies Cambodia entered the 20th century with a cultural renaissance and modernisation that included an expansion of education beyond the traditional pagoda-based structure. New academic institutions that were founded (e.g., Royal Library, Buddhist Institute) became crucibles for the emergence of Kambuja Suriya journal, the fi rst Khmer dictionary, the Association of Khmer Writers , and the fi rst Khmer political journal (Sruk Khmaer and later Nagaravatta) (Clayton 1995 ; Edwards 2004 ; Harris 2005 , 105-56). Intense cultural and political exchanges between Cambodia and the French Protectorate characterised this period, as the French and the Khmers positioned themselves as rescuers of the descendants of Angkor to protecting their autonomy from encroaching neighbours of Thailand and Vietnam. Khmer local responses to geopolitics were more responsible for this renaissance than were western pressures to modernise (e.g., Edwards 2007 ; Hansen 2007). Khmers increasingly linked Khmer literary traditions, Buddhism, and their Angkorian past to an emerging Khmer national identity, and Angkor Wat became the symbol of the new Cambodia (Thompson 2004b , 2006 , 2016). French colonial scholars pushed back against this local narrative, denigrating contemporary Khmer literature and highlighting the rupture between modern Cambodia and Angkor through contrasting the 'degenerate' post-Angkor period with its Theravada Buddhist literature with Angkor's period of regional dominance (e.g., Coedès 1931). Some also charged that Khmers lacked self-expression altogether (Pou 1980 , 142). These colonial critics misunderstood Khmer literature, which-like Khmer education and knowledge production more broadlywas deeply enmeshed with Buddhism, the monarchy, and a patron-client system (e.g., Ayres 2000 ; Clayton 1995 , 2; Chigas 2000). They also underestimated the local respect for Khmer cultural heritage, which King Norodom explained in 1891 in opposition to a French request to remove statuary from Khmer temples:

The Angkorian House

Routledge eBooks, Apr 5, 2023

Diachronic modeling ofthe population within the medieval Greater Angkor Region settlement complex

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), May 7, 2021

Prasat and Pteah: Habitation within Angkor Wat's temple enclosure

Archaeological Research in Asia

The Angkor empire (9-15th centuries CE) was one of mainland Southeast Asia's major civilizations,... more The Angkor empire (9-15th centuries CE) was one of mainland Southeast Asia's major civilizations, with a 3000 km 2 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.

The Temple Economy of Angkor

Routledge eBooks, Apr 5, 2023

Form, structure and long-term Angkorian urbanism: A view from the Kok Phnov site (9th–10th century CE)

Archaeological Research in Asia, 2022

The capital of Angkor remained the powerbase of the Khmer polity for more than 600 years, indicat... more 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 forcesas well as state design and topographycrafted 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.

Landscape, upland-lowland, community, and economy of the mekong river (6th-8th century CE): case studies from the Pre-Angkorian centers of Thala Borivat and Sambor

World Archaeology, 2022

Southeast Asian archaeological research often emphasizes upland-lowland dynamics in the developme... more Southeast Asian archaeological research often emphasizes upland-lowland dynamics in the development of premodern complex societies. This paper tracks upland-lowland dynamics in Pre-Angkorian (6th-8th century CE) Cambodia by focusing on land-use and economy along the Mekong River. Proto-urban settlements emerged throughout the Tonle Sap and Mekong Delta alluvial plains but also appeared at key centers such as Thala Borivat, Sambor, and Wat Phu along the Mekong River's more narrow corridors. The diversified economy that involved movement of forest resources and food between these tropical upland-lowland ecotones, observed during the colonial period, emerged by the 6th-7th centuries CE and coincided with political consolidations during the Pre-Angkor period. Analysis of this region suggests that non-Khmer (ethnic minority) swidden agricultural groups who now dominate the uplands have premodern roots in the region. Using upland-lowland settings to study tropical habitation, this archaeological study offers a riskreduction exchange-based model for understanding Cambodia's premodern Mekong organization.

The Position of Cambodian Archaeology in Current Sociopolitical Context

Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology, 2017

This paper aims to provide a glimpse into the sociopolitical settings of current archaeology in C... more This paper aims to provide a glimpse into the sociopolitical settings of current archaeology in Cambodia. The archaeological training got a late start in Cambodia, beginning in 1968, and its first graduates were forced to confront a series of complications: social unrest, civil wars, and lootings. In the 1990s, National and international efforts revived and trained a new generation of archaeologists. The setting in which this new generation practices, unlike their predecessors, is not one of warfare but rather of continued lootings and developments that result in a large number of archaeological sites being destroyed for prime real estates and new road constructions without proper salvage research. However, in a few cases, some archaeologists are employed merely as salaried workers and data collectors for their international counterparts. Though the majority of research continues to be in Angkor and around large monuments, some projects have shifted focus to study early periods loca...

Mind the Gap: Occupation at Angkor Wat and Implications for the decline of Angkor

Organizational Change in Political Economy and Ideology: Transition from the Early Historic to Pre-Angkorian Period Cambodia, Viewed from Thala Borivat

Diachronic modeling of the population within the medieval Greater Angkor Region settlement complex

Science Advances, 2021

The Greater Angkor Region was home to approximately 700,000 to 900,000 inhabitants at its apogee ... more

The Khmer did not live by rice alone: Archaeobotanical investigations at Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

Archaeological Research in Asia, 2020

The Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influen... more The Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influence across mainland Southeast Asia and is now one of the most archaeologically visible polities due to its expansive religious building works. This paper presents archaeobotanical evidence from two of the most renowned Angkorian temples largely associated with kings and elites, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. But it focuses on the people that dwelt within the temple enclosures, some of whom were involved in the daily functions of the temple. Archaeological work indicates that temple enclosures were areas of habitation within the Angkorian urban core and the temples and their enclosures were ritual, political, social, and economic landscapes. This paper provides the first attempt to reconstruct some aspects of the lives of the non-elites living within the temple enclosures by examining the archaeobotanical evidence, both macroremains and phytoliths, from residential contexts and data derived from inscriptions and Zhou Daguan's historical account dating to the 13th century CE. Research indicates that plants found within the temple enclosure of Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat were grown for ritual or medicinal use, and also formed important components of the diet and household economy.

Residential patterning at Angkor Wat

Antiquity, 2015

Considerable attention has been devoted to the architecture and art history of Cambodia's Ang... more 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.

Post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Archaeology in

Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2014

Archaeological Report on the Thnal Mrech Kiln Site (TMK 02), Anlong Thom, Phnom Kulen, Cambodia

... 1, June 2003, www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm. Asia Research Institute Editorial Committee Maz... more

Centralized power/decentralized production? Angkorian stoneware and the southern production complex of Cheung Ek, Cambodia

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2021

Despite the composition close to glassy forming alloys, face centered cubic (FCC) Co81.8Si9.1B9.1... more Despite the composition close to glassy forming alloys, face centered cubic (FCC) Co81.8Si9.1B9.1, designed based on Co9B atomic cluster (polyhedral), are synthesized as singlephase ribbons successfully. These ribbons, with grain sizes of ca. 92 nm, show supreme ductility and strong orientation along (111), which couples with shape anisotropy leading to high magnetocrystalline anisotropy comparable to Co rich Co-Pt nanoscale thin films, with a coercivity of 430 Oe and squareness of 0.82 at room temperature. The stability and magnetic behaviors of the phase are discussed based on experimental electronic structure. This work not only develops low cost Co-based materials for hard magnetic applications, but also extends the atomic cluster model developed for amorphous alloys into the design of new crystalline materials.

$Figure 1. PXRD pattern (a) and TEM observation (b) of as-cast Cosi.sSi9.1B9.1 ribbons. The inset in (a) shows pictures of ribbons and the Co9B cluster extracted from Co23Bo (yellow balls for B and blue balls for Co). The inset in (b) gives the selected area electron diffraction corresponding to the observed zone.$

Changing Angkorian Stoneware Production Modes: Bang Kong Kiln and Thnal Mrech Kiln

The Angkorian city: From Hariharalaya to Yashodharapura

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific r... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. The Angkorian city: From Hariharalaya to Yashodharapura Miriam Stark, Alison Carter, Piphal Heng, Rachna Chhay, Damian Evans

The evolution of agro-urbanism: A case study from Angkor, Cambodia

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

The Khmer did not live by rice alone: Archaeobotanical investigations at Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

by Alison K Carter, Piphal Heng, and Miriam Stark

Archaeological Research in Asia, 2020

Free PDF download available until Oct 1, 2020 at this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1bZ8C... more Free PDF download available until Oct 1, 2020 at this link:
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1bZ8C8MrPs63pY

The Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influence across mainland Southeast Asia and is now one of the most archaeologically visible polities due to its expansive re- ligious building works. This paper presents archaeobotanical evidence from two of the most renowned Angkorian temples largely associated with kings and elites, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. But it focuses on the people that dwelt within the temple enclosures, some of whom were involved in the daily functions of the temple. Archaeological work indicates that temple enclosures were areas of habitation within the Angkorian urban core and the temples and their enclosures were ritual, political, social, and economic landscapes. This paper provides the first attempt to reconstruct some aspects of the lives of the non-elites living within the temple enclosures by examining the archaeobotanical evidence, both macroremains and phytoliths, from residential contexts and data derived from inscriptions and Zhou Daguan's historical account dating to the 13th century CE. Research indicates that plants found within the temple enclosure of Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat were grown for ritual or medicinal use, and also formed important components of the diet and household economy.

The Khmer did not live by rice alone: Archaeobotanical investigations at Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm

by Dorian Q Fuller, Piphal Heng, and Cristina Castillo

Archaeological Research in Asia, 2020

The Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influen... more The Angkorian Empire was at its peak from the 10th to 13th centuries CE. It wielded great influence across mainland Southeast Asia and is now one of the most archaeologically visible polities due to its expansive religious building works. This paper presents archaeobotanical evidence from two of the most renowned Angkorian temples largely associated with kings and elites, Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. But it focuses on the people that dwelt within the temple enclosures, some of whom were involved in the daily functions of the temple. Archaeological work indicates that temple enclosures were areas of habitation within the Angkorian urban core and the temples and their enclosures were ritual, political, social, and economic landscapes. This paper provides the first attempt to reconstruct some aspects of the lives of the non-elites living within the temple enclosures by examining the archaeobotanical evidence, both macroremains and phytoliths, from residential contexts and data derived from inscriptions and Zhou Daguan's historical account dating to the 13th century CE. Research indicates that plants found within the temple enclosure of Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat were grown for ritual or medicinal use, and also formed important components of the diet and household economy.

$Summary statistics of the botanical remains. * Figures were interpolated (estimates based on fractional subsampling) > Figures excluding modern plant parts & termite frass. Table 1$

ការស្រាវជ្រាវបុរាណវិទ្យានៅគោកព្នៅ នគរោបនីយកម្មក្រុងអង្គរ និងខណ្ឌអង្គរខាងកើត (An Archaeological Investigation at Kok Phnov: Angkor Urbanism and Angkor Eastern District)

Preah Nokor: Journal of Angkor Studies, 2021

Diachronic modeling of the population within the medieval Greater Angkor Region settlement complex

by Alison K Carter, Miriam Stark, Piphal Heng, and christophe Pottier

Science Advances, 2021

Angkor is one of the world’s largest premodern settlement complexes (9th to 15th centuries CE), b... more 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.