Posted May 20, 2003

June 18, 2003 - Lecture on Scale, Structure and the Demise of the 'Hydraulic City' at Angkor

Lecture Announcement:

Wednesday, June 18
5 pm
Location: Library Instruction Room, 305 Wurster Hall

"Scale, Structure and the Demise of the 'Hydraulic City' at Angkor"

Damian Evans
Archaeological Computing Laboratory
Spatial Science Innovation Unit
University of Sydney

The decline of the early historic settlement of Angkor, in Cambodia, represents one of the great demographic collapses in the history of urbanism. In the 12th and 13th century CE, the settlement sprawled over an area of over 1000 km2 and may have carried a population approaching 750,000. Without a doubt, Angkor's defining archaeological feature is not its collection of temples: it is the sheer scale of its water management system. A vast water management system connected the monumental religious complex in the centre of the Angkor plain to the Kulen Hills in the north and to the great lake, the Tonle Sap, in the south. Angkorean achievements in monumental architecture were equalled or surpassed in many places worldwide, but their achievements in hydraulic engineering, as far as can be told, were not.

Using Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing, the Archaeological Computing Laboratory at the University of Sydney is investigating the nature of Angkorian urbanism, and exploring the reasons for its ultimate decline.

Free and open to the public.

Sponsors:
The Geographic Information Science Center
The Pacific Neighborhood Consortium
The Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies
The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative
The Center for Information Technology Research
in the Interests of Scoiety
Berkeley Center for the Information Society
Center for Southeast Asia Studies

Contact: cari@uclink.berkeley.edu

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