Uno de los hitos arqueológicos del 2007, según la revista Archaeology, fue la culminación del mapa arqueológico del monumento que ha tardado 10 años en realizar el proyecto Greater Angkor (GAP). Este mapa de la ciudad preindustrial más grande del mundo ha ayudado a dar pistas de las posibles causas del colapso de la ciudad, que posiblemente se debió a la sobrepoblación y a problemas con el medio ambiente y manejo de los recursos.
Archaeology, enero/febrero 2008: Greater Angkor, Cambodia
This computer reconstruction of Angkor Wat is based in part on a new map of the site and the vast urban landscape that surrounded it. (Courtesy Tom Chandler/Monash University). Archaeology.
The capital of a Khmer state that flourished between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, Cambodia’s Angkor is one of the most intensively studied sites in the world. But it continues to inspire more questions than answers, the most fundamental being why the sophisticated Khmer Empire collapsed. In 2007, research into the mysteries of the world’s largest preindustrial city reached a milestone with the completion of a 10-year mapping project, which yielded clues suggesting that the sprawling metropolis may have collapsed under self-induced environmental pressures related to overpopulation and deforestation.
«Angkor was a vast inhabited landscape…larger than anything previously known,» says Damian Evans, deputy director of the Greater Angkor Project (GAP) and lead author of the group’s findings. Their map covers more than 1,100 square miles, detailing thousands of features that were part of an elaborate irrigation system.
The GAP team combined previously existing ground surveys, aerial photos, and radar remote-sensing data provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab to create the comprehensive map. It shows an urban center surrounded by dispersed agricultural villages, local temples, and small reservoirs. The team found evidence of silted canals and breached waterworks that suggest the people of Angkor were eventually unable to maintain the vast irrigation system because of erosion and increased flooding. The map also shows the metropolis extended miles beyond the ruins within today’s Angkor Archaeological Park. «Extremely valuable archaeological material stretches far beyond the World Heritage zone,» Evans says.
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La revista PNAS (Proceedings) dedica un artículo muy completo sobre este mapa.
PNAS, 29 de junio de 2007: A comprehensive archaeological map of the world’s largest preindustrial settlement complex at Angkor, Cambodia
A new archaeological map of Greater Angkor. PNAS.
The great medieval settlement of Angkor in Cambodia [9th–16th centuries Common Era (CE)] has for many years been understood as a “hydraulic city,” an urban complex defined, sustained, and ultimately overwhelmed by a complex water management network. Since the 1980s that view has been disputed, but the debate has remained unresolved because of insufficient data on the landscape beyond the great temples: the broader context of the monumental remains was only partially understood and had not been adequately mapped. Since the 1990s, French, Australian, and Cambodian teams have sought to address this empirical deficit through archaeological mapping projects by using traditional methods such as ground survey in conjunction with advanced radar remote-sensing applications in partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Here we present a major outcome of that research: a comprehensive archaeological map of greater Angkor, covering nearly 3,000 km2, prepared by the Greater Angkor Project (GAP). The map reveals a vast, low-density settlement landscape integrated by an elaborate water management network covering >1,000 km2, the most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world. It is now clear that anthropogenic changes to the landscape were both extensive and substantial enough to have created grave challenges to the long-term viability of the settlement. (seguir leyendo)
Arqueoafición 