| Abstract: |
The development of Angkor from the sixth to the sixteenth century derived from two separate, low-density towns with dispersed residence, Bhavapura (around Ak Yum) (sixth to eighth century) and Hariharalaya (eighth to ninth century) which were integrated into a multicentric urban complex in the late ninth century by the formation of a huge, new residential area around the triad of the Royal Palace, the temple on Phnom Bakheng and the East Baray. From then on successive developments can be schematically described as occurring to the west, south, and north, until by the early thirteenth century the urban complex had stabilized and alterations were occurring primarily in the central area. In the fourteenth century severe, unstable climate change produced mega-monsoons, whose water flow eroded the central canal and deposited massive quantities of cross-bedded sand in the southern canals, ending the capacity of the water management network to shield the population of Greater Angkor from the following droughts. After this damage had occurred, Ayutthaya made a brief incursion into Angkor in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century, Angkor began to transmute into its Middle Period—early modern settlement form around a row of Buddhist wat along the Siem Reap River.
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