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

Sarah Klassen; Alison K Carter; Damian H Evans; Scott Ortman; Miriam T Stark; Alyssa A Loyless; Martin Polkinghorne; Piphal Heng; Michael Hill; Pelle Wijker; Jonathan Niles-Weed; Gary P Marriner; Christophe Pottier; Roland J Fletcher

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abf8441

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

Sci Adv. 2021 May 7;7(19):eabf8441. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abf8441. Print 2021 May.

Authors

Sarah Klassen^{1

2

3}, Alison K Carter⁴, Damian H Evans⁵, Scott Ortman⁶, Miriam T Stark⁷, Alyssa A Loyless⁸, Martin Polkinghorne⁹, Piphal Heng¹⁰, Michael Hill¹¹, Pelle Wijker⁵, Jonathan Niles-Weed¹², Gary P Marriner¹³, Christophe Pottier⁵, Roland J Fletcher¹⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. sarah.e.klassen@gmail.com.
² University of Oregon, 1585 E 13th Avenue, Eugene, OR 97403, USA.
³ Leiden University, Rapenburg 70, 2311 EZ Leiden, Netherlands.
⁴ Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, 308 Condon Hall, 1321 Kincaid Street, Eugene, OR 97403 USA.
⁵ École française d'Extrême-Orient, 22 Avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, France.
⁶ Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
⁷ Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI, USA.
⁸ Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305, USA.
⁹ Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia.
¹⁰ Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA.
¹¹ Independent Scholar, Portland, OR 97214, USA.
¹² Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Center for Data Science, New York University, New York, NY 10012, USA.
¹³ Casey & Lowe Archaeology and Heritage, Sydney, NSW 2040, Australia.
¹⁴ Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.

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.

Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Grants and funding

P2C HD066613/HD/NICHD NIH HHS/United States