| Abstract: |
The remarkable story of Angkor’s emergence and growth to become the largest city of the pre-industrial world, and its ambiguous and much-debated demise as the locus of power in Cambodia, is set against a backdrop of local environmental conditions and regional environmental change. While the links between the natural environment and Angkor as a social, cultural, and material phenomenon are not deterministic, it is clear that city’s character and historical trajectory shaped and were shaped by the environments from which it drew its natural resources and which imposed dynamic limits on the form and function of the city. In this chapter, we consider the opportunities provided by the unique and productive floodplains of the Tonle Sap Lake, upon which Angkor’s success was ultimately founded. We also consider the large-scale processes that influence climate over mainland Southeast Asia and review the distal causes of the climatic instability that was coincident with Angkor’s demise as the seat of the Khmer kings.
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