Abstract
Throughout the Angkor period (9th to 15th centuries CE), the Khmer kingdom maintained a series of interconnected cities and smaller settlements across its territory on mainland Southeast Asia. One such city was Koh Ker, which for a brief period in the 10th century CE even served as a royal capital. The complexity of the political landscape meant the Khmer kings and the elite were particularly mobile through the Angkor period, and rupture in royal houses was common. However, while the historical record chronicles the 10th century migration of the royal seat from Koh Ker back to Angkor, the fate of Koh Ker’s domestic population has remained unknown. In this article, we reconstruct the settlement history of Koh Ker, using palaeoecological and geoarchaeological techniques, and show that human activity and land use persisted in the city for several centuries beyond the city’s abandonment by the royal court. These results highlight the utility of multi-proxy environmental reconstructions of Khmer urban settlements for re-evaluating prevailing assumptions regarding the use and occupation of Angkor-period cities.
Highlights
The city of Koh Ker was an important secondary city within the Khmer kingdom during the Angkor period (9th-15th centuries CE)
Throughout the Angkor period (9th to 15th centuries CE), the Khmer kingdom maintained a series of interconnected cities and smaller settlements across its territory on mainland Southeast Asia
The original survey of Aymonier [3], later enhanced by Lajonquiere [4] and Parmentier [5], reveals an expansive city housing a large reservoir and several impressive temple monuments, which speaks to Koh Ker’s opulence and its position within a kingdom of growing prosperity [6]
Summary
The city of Koh Ker was an important secondary city within the Khmer kingdom during the Angkor period (9th-15th centuries CE). Located 80 km northeast of the primate city of Angkor (Fig 1), along the royal road network that connected Angkor to many of its various peripheral settlements [1, 2], Koh Ker maintains one of the most intriguing histories of any settlement within the Khmer city network. The conventional narrative describes King Jayavarman IV selecting Koh Ker as either the main (or an alternative) capital for the kingdom in 921/922 CE [7,8,9], until the onset of the reign of Rajendravarman in 928 CE, when the king and his court returned to the cities of Angkor.
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