Join the CIAMS community for a lecture by Dr. Piphal Heng in Goldwin Smith Hall G22. Lecture title: "Beyond Collapse: Urban Reorganization at Angkor Wat after Empire, 14th-18th Centuries." Reception to follow with refreshments served.

The traditional narrative of Angkor often treats political collapse, urban decline, and abandonment as part of the same process following the decline of the Khmer Empire in the fifteenth century. Recent archaeological research at Angkor Wat, however, reveals a more complex history of urban change. LiDAR and archaeological investigations have shown that the temple enclosure was not an empty ceremonial space but contained an organized residential landscape of occupation mounds, ponds, roads, and other features associated with the operation of the temple and its community. This talk brings together excavation, geophysical survey, LiDAR, radiocarbon dates, and historical evidence to examine how this urban organization changed between the Angkorian and post-Angkorian periods. Evidence from different parts of the enclosure documents changes in residential organization, the modification of earlier urban spaces, and the continued importance of Angkor Wat as a religious and political center. Rather than representing an abrupt episode of abandonment, these changes suggest a long-term process of spatial and institutional reorganization. The archaeology of Angkor Wat provides a detailed case study for examining what happened to urban communities after the decline of Angkorian imperial power.

Piphal Heng is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University and an archaeologist specializing in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Cambodia and the Angkor region. His research examines urbanism, political organization, religious change, and the long-term development of complex societies through archaeological excavation, remote sensing, geophysics, and material analysis. He is co-director of the Phum Archaeology Project and currently leads research on urban organization at Koh Ker and Angkor Wat. His broader work explores how archaeological evidence can reshape understandings of empire, landscape, and social reorganization in mainland Southeast Asia.