165 Who built the astonishing buildings in Angkor? A seasonal labour force (corvee labour), the provinces of the Khmer Empire would have been directed to come to Angkor in the dry season after the harvest, to work on construction and maintenance. The architects, planners and site managers would have been members of the brahmin elite who lived in Angkor. Why did they build such a complex water management system? Why was it important for the inhabitants? Angkorian Khmers built an extensive water management system both to protect their capital from flooding (particularly by constructing canals and embankments around the periphery of the urban core) and to feed a series of state reservoirs that helped buffer the annual dry season of Southeast Asia’s monsoon climate. Its rainy season brings a surplus of water that the Khmers stored in tanks and ponds, which were key to weathering the annual drought we call the dry season. That these reservoirs had ritual purposes is also the case, and some may have facilitated farming through limited irrigation. Did Angkor really collapse as a city? The city of Angkor contains no archaeological evidence for catastrophic abandonment, as happened at other ancient cities like Pompeii. Archaeological evidence suggests instead a gradual population decline that began in the 14th century CE, and that involved socio-political and cultural transformations. So, can you tell us what caused the transformation? There seem to be several factors. One factor that has been identified is that Angkor suffered from a mix of severe droughts and heavy monsoons. This stressed the city’s highly developed water management network that protected its civic-ceremonial core from flooding and damage, and also caused a breakdown to parts of the infrastructure. However, other evidence indicates people were starting to leave the Angkor area prior to these events, so there is still more work to be done to fully understand what was happening. Any other key factors that might have caused the decrease in population? Regional dynamics during the 14th–15th centuries involved the intensification of maritime commerce and activity linking Cambodia to China and Japan. As commerce increased throughout the South China Sea, Khmer elites and their royal court relocated from Greater Angkor southward to Longvek and ultimately Phnom Penh to enhance participation in this international maritime trade. It seems very complex to understand what had been happening. Do you see any parallels between the challenges of today (climate change and Covid Crises) to what happened there? Making direct comparisons between the Angkorian case and our contemporary situation is difficult. What we do know is that Angkorian Khmers could only react or adapt to immediate situations as they took place. We have known for some time, for example, that climate change is taking place and are in a position to plan in advance. The Khmers lacked both these early warning systems and also knowledge of long-term human responses to different kinds of events. Is there anything left you want to speak about that we haven’t covered yet? We want to push against the still-common narrative that Angkor was lost or “discovered” by Europeans. This narrative is false. Angkor’s population fell considerably in the 14th and 15th centuries and never regained its regional prominence, but it remained so salient as a pilgrimage place that subsequent Khmer kings returned several times to modify temples and make dedicatory inscriptions. Angkor Wat in particular became an important Buddhist pilgrimage site that was wellknown across Asia, and Khmer villages continued to dot the Angkorian landscape. Jetzt bist du dran: 1. Erkläre die Namen Angkor Wat und Greater Angkor. Recherchiere die deutsche Bezeichnung für Greater Angkor. 2. Beschreibe das Bewässerungssystem Angkors. Arbeite heraus, welche Zwecke es erfüllte. Nenne andere Kulturen, die zwischen dem 9. und 15. Jh. ebenfalls komplexe Bewässerungssysteme verwendeten. 3. Formuliere drei Fragen an die Wissenschaftler/innen Alison Stark, Miriam Stark und Roland Fletcher zu Greater Angkor oder Angkor Wat. Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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