Abstract
Nowadays, traditional Khmer farmers are living on the framework of the ancient capital cities of Angkor, which is also visited by nearly two million tourists a year. They are torn between the aspiration of profiting from the country as it opens to the market economy and to mass tourism, and the restrictions of living in a place that is stagnating into a museum representation. With international heritage developers advocating the re-creation of an ancient idealized space, the solutions offered to the new generation are to either leave the site or to become part of its folklore. In this paper the approach these inhabitants chose when settling in this area whilst developing it within the framework of their living culture shall be taken into consideration. Angkor is not stuck in the past: These populations lay new layers on the partly erased ancient structure. Ancient developments, far from being simply archaeological remains to be preserved, are used on a daily basis in residential, farming, and religious activities. Angkor is not just an archaeological site, it is also a living territory.
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Notes
- 1.
Portuguese and Spanish missionaries: Diego Do Couto (1550), Gaspar de Cruz (1556) and French travellers: Father Charles Emile Bouillevaux (1857), Henri Mouhot (1860).
- 2.
The Greater Angkor Project by the University of Sydney is directed by Christophe Pottier, a French mission on urban archaeology is directed by Jacques Gaucher.
- 3.
Furthermore, this temple did not wait for the French to become the geo symbol of the country. The image of the temple had already been used as a symbol on a seal and on coins in the middle of the nineteenth century.
- 4.
Supposedly one of the earliest sketch plans of Angkor Wat by this Japanese visitor was published in 1923 in BEFEO XXIII, 119–126.
- 5.
Compare the contributions by Sengupta and Falser in this volume.
- 6.
Editor’s note: How social and religious practices on heritage sites are continued and become part (or do not become part) of technical decisions of restoration is discussed by Warrack, Chermayeff, and Pichard in this volume. These approaches need to be set in relation to the new simulation techniques of ‘archaeological dead ruins’ as discussed in this volume by Gruen, Nguonphan/Bock, Toubekis/Jansen, Cunin, and Sanday. The continuing power of spirits on the ancient land of the Khmer from a post-genocide phase in Cambodia is discussed by Warrack and Guillou in this volume.
- 7.
A huge Angkorian water tank.
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Luco, F. (2013). The Angkorian Palimpsest: The Daily Life of Villagers Living on a World Heritage Site. In: Falser, M., Juneja, M. (eds) 'Archaeologizing' Heritage?. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35870-8_14
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