Pre-Angkor earthenware ceramics from Cambodia's Mekong Delta

This chapter summarizes the chronology, technology and contexts of earthenwares recovered from Cambodia's archaeological sites. It compares Cambodian archaeological ceramics with those found elsewhere in mainland Southeast Asia, and identifies directions for future research.

Udaya: Journal of Khmer Studies, 2019

This paper explores the technology of earthenware ceramic traditions from the archaeological site of Angkor Borei (Takeo Province, Cambodia). Excavations at the Angkor Borei site from 1996-2000 by the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project produced a well-dated chronological sequence of locally-manufactured earthenware ceramics that spans the period from c. 5 00 BCE – 200 CE. Here we review the range of earthenware technological traditions reflected in the excavated archaeological, and focus in detail on the technology and geochemistry ceramics recovered from an excavation trench into the southern edge of the Vat Komnou mound, located in the central section of the community’s lower segment. We use a technologie approach to contrast a localized geochemical signature in the Angkor Borei ceramic assemblage with particular morphological and production-related characteristics that reveal broader technological traditions through cultural transmission. In some cases, and at some points in the sequence, aspects of the Angkor Borei earthenware ceramic assemblage echo technological traditions encompass much of the Lower and Middle Mekong regions in which protohistoric populations interacted.

2015

Polities in the Mekong delta played a central role in regional developments between 500 BC and AD 500. Documentary data suggest the delta reached its political apex during the 3rd through 7th centuries. What were the roots of early polities in this region, and what was their organization? Research by the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project seeks to answer these questions through field investigations in southern Cambodia. Excavations at the ancient capital of Angkor Borei suggest a continuous occupation of the area from the 4th century BC onwards; the timing, development and nature of interregional networks are now under study. This presentation describes some results of research at Angkor Borei, and discusses ongoing research on the

Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, 2007

Primary Sources and Asian Pasts, 2021

Conventional Southeast Asian scholarship uses documentary sources and art history to explain the origins of first millennium CE developments, when temple-anchored Brahmanic and Buddhist religions, international trade networks, and the region’s earliest cities emerged. Geopolitical factors and regional intellectual paradigms partly explain why archaeological research lags behind epigraphy and art history for interpreting Early Southeast Asia. Yet findings from recent landscape-based archaeological research complicate interpretations in novel and important ways. This paper blends archaeological and historical research from protohistoric and pre-Angkorian Cambodia as a springboard for discussing the first millennium CE developments across mainland Southeast Asia. Studying sites, water features, statuary, ceramics and beads helps us understand how Southeast Asians drew from a South Asian idiom to forge ritual-political landscapes, establish local identities, and cohere populations into several of the region’s earliest states.

2009

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2016

Archaeological data over the past two decades have contributed to our understanding of the transition into the historic period in Southeast Asia and rebutted outdated models of externally stimulated complex polity formation. This article investigates the transition into the Pre-Angkorian period 300–500 CE based on a model constructed using archaeological data from Thala Borivat, Cambodia. Data from Thala Borivat suggest a pattern of continuity where smaller proto-historic settlements may have become incorporated c.300–500 CE into larger ones which became major Pre-Angkorian centres. This phenomenon coincided with evidence of increasing inter- and intra-regional interaction following the proto-historic period. This article argues that the model can be used to reinterpret the pattern observed in major Pre-Angkorian centres in the Mekong Delta and northeast Thailand. This pattern is complemented by the spatial correlation between the chronometrically-anchored ceramic traditions in proto-historic and early historic period Cambodia that suggests the continuity of local communities. Spatial correlation between prehistoric sites and inscriptions recording Pre-Angkorian elites, particularly the poñ, mratāñ, and kings provides similar patterns of continuity between the elites of the late proto-historic to the Pre-Angkorian periods.