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The Angkorian hydrological landscape: reconstructing the causes and effects

Sam Player (University of Sydney)

Abstract

Dispersed around the ancient medieval city of Angkor in modern Cambodia are numerous linear embankments, often with an associated channel. Whatever the intention, the effect was clearly a redistribution of water around the landscape. Water management has played a central role in the debate of Angkor’s abandonment since Bernard Groslier named it the ‘cité hydraulique’. Whether the redistributed water was used in irrigation for production of an agricultural surplus, and whether degradation of the system would have caused a critical loss of this surplus, are both questions central to this debate, and well suited to a geoarchaeological approach. The questions are essentially hydrological and may be addressed using modelling tools developed for contemporary water management. However, the remains of the channel network are fragmentary, requiring sedimentological and pedological methods in order to reconstruct channel cross-sectional geometries, and to interpret whether or not they ever constrained significant flows of water.