Urbanism and Residential Patterning in Angkor

16 pages. This article was first published in "Journal of Field Archaeology" by Taylor and Francis Group & Routledge. First published at https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2018.1503034The Khmer Empire (9th–15th centuries a.d.), centered on the Greater Angkor region, was the most extensive political entity in the history of mainland Southeast Asia. Stone temples constructed by Angkorian kings and elites were widely assumed to have been loci of ritual as well as habitation, though the latter has been poorly documented archaeologically. In this paper, we present the results of two field seasons of excavation at the temple site of Ta Prohm. Using LiDAR data to focus our excavations, we offer evidence for residential occupation within the temple enclosure from before the 11th century a.d. until the 14th century. A comparison with previous work exploring habitation areas within the Angkor Wat temple enclosure highlights similarities and differences between the two temples. We argue that temple habitation was a key component of the Angkorian urban system and that investigating this unique form of urbanism expands current comparative research on the diversity of ancient cities.We wish to thank the APSARA National Authority for their collaboration and permission to undertake excavations within the Ta Prohm enclosure. We thank So Malay and Martin King for administrative support, and GAP 2012 and 2014 crew members, whose labor produced this research. We thank the PT McElhanney, Indonesia company for its contribution to the LiDAR acquisition, which was funded by eight institutions: the Khmer Archaeology LiDAR Consortium (KALC), APSARA National Authority, the University of Sydney, the 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. Damian Evans’ contribution to this project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 639828). This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under grant DP1092663. We also wish to thank The Robert Christie Foundation. We are indebted to Drs. Mitch Hendrickson and Michael E. Smith for providing invaluable comments on earlier drafts and Christophe Pottier for his insights on Angkorian urbanism. All mistakes are the responsibility of the principal author