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

Abstract

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.

A Historiography of Settlement Archaeology in Southeast Asia, with Emphasis on the Pre-industrial State Formations | မြို့ပြြထွန်းကားြီအချက်အလက်ြျားအပြါ်ြူတည်လျက် အပှေ့ပတာင်အာှေှေိ အပပခချပနထိုင်ပခင်းဆိုင်ှာပှေးပောင်းသုပတသ နပလ့လာြှုသြုငိ ်း

“…This is especially true when it comes to our conceptions of the ground plans, demographics, and economic systems of the vast urban centers that have attracted so much scholarly attention (Kim 2013:222;Miksic 2017:555). These cities have regularly been modeled as low-density (Fletcher 2009(Fletcher , 2012 or agro-urban (Carter et al 2021) communities. Although one can find considerable support for such models in the ethnohistoric literature, independent verification of their efficacy awaits more detailed archaeological knowledge of how and where the commoner segment of the urban citizenry lived, and what the space surrounding individual house lots and larger settlement clusters looked like.…”

“…The SEAMEO SPAFA International Conference on Southeast Asian Archaeology and Fine Arts A Challenge for Would-Be Southeast Asian Settlement Archaeologists A major challenge for Southeast Asian archaeologists is that the domestic architecture of both commoners and the nobility was, for the most part, constructed entirely of perishable materials (Carter et al 2018:493;Klassen 2021), and many of these constructions also had their wooden living floors raised above the ground on piles/stilts to varying heights (Carter et al 2018:495-496). Still other structures were built directly on the ground surface, without any raised foundations.…”

“…Recent efforts to formulate demographic models for Angkor's urban population have been based largely on remote sensing data (LiDAR) and estimates of house lot occupancy rates -assuming a standard habitation mound area of 600 m 2 for each residential group of 5 individuals -augmented by archaeological excavations of infrastructure features and temple enclosure habitation sites, historical dates and population information from inscriptions, radiocarbon assays, and the application of machine learning algorithms (Carter et al 2019;Carter et al 2021;Klassen et al 2021). The result has been what the authors refer to as a "granular, diachronic, paleodemographic model," one that can be used to guide "future fine-grained analyses in response to many of the grand challenges of archaeology, such as the emergence and decline of social complexity, and the implications…”

Deciphering a Timeline of Demise at Medieval Angkor, Cambodia Using Remote Sensing

“…Angkor rose as the chief political center of the Khmer in the early 9th century and remained so for hundreds of years. By the mid-12th century, their dominion encompassed much of what is now Cambodia, Thailand, and southern Vietnam, with the capital based within the dispersed, urban-agrarian landscape of the 3000 km 2 Greater Angkor Region [14][15][16]. The Kulen hills, which characterize the landscape northeast of Angkor, are the source of the rivers that meander down a gentle gradient to the Tonle Sap lake in the southwest.…”

“…As rainfall is the single most significant factor affecting rice crop yields [17], favorable monsoon conditions enhanced with landscape-scale engineering allowed Angkor's agrarian economy to flourish. Consistent crop surpluses and agricultural extensification at the capital [21] enabled the population to grow to up to 900,000 people [16]. As the army, drawing on a larger labor pool, repeatedly pushed the frontier outwards, the regional expansion would have brought additional resources into the capital [22].…”