[Article] A comprehensive archaeological map of the world's largest preindustrial settlement complex at Angkor, Cambodia.

Damian Evans*,†, Christophe Pottier‡, Roland Fletcher§, Scott Hensley¶, Ian Tapley‖, Anthony Milne**, and Michael Barbetti††

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Edited by Michael D. Coe, Yale University, New Haven, CT, and approved June 29, 2007 (received for review March 17, 2007). [PNAS September 4, 2007 vol. 104 no. 36 14277-14282]

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Abstract

The great medieval settlement of Angkor in Cambodia [9th–16th centuries Common Era (CE)] has for many years been understood as a “hydraulic city,” an urban complex defined, sustained, and ultimately overwhelmed by a complex water management network. Since the 1980s that view has been disputed, but the debate has remained unresolved because of insufficient data on the landscape beyond the great temples: the broader context of the monumental remains was only partially understood and had not been adequately mapped. Since the 1990s, French, Australian, and Cambodian teams have sought to address this empirical deficit through archaeological mapping projects by using traditional methods such as ground survey in conjunction with advanced radar remote-sensing applications in partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Here we present a major outcome of that research: a comprehensive archaeological map of greater Angkor, covering nearly 3,000 km2, prepared by the Greater Angkor Project (GAP). The map reveals a vast, low-density settlement landscape integrated by an elaborate water management network covering >1,000 km2, the most extensive urban complex of the preindustrial world. It is now clear that anthropogenic changes to the landscape were both extensive and substantial enough to have created grave challenges to the long-term viability of the settlement.

†To whom correspondence should be addressed at:

Archaeological Computing Laboratory, Madsen Building F09, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. evans@acl.arts.usyd.edu.au

Fig. 2. A new archaeological map of Greater Angkor.

Read the full article on PNAS.org (free access)

[Photos] Time - Ordos, China : A Modern Ghost Town.

In the Kangbanshi district of Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, a home for one million people remains nearly empty five years after construction began.

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Photograph by Michael Christopher Brown for TIME.

See the pictures >>

Read the article - by Bill Powell  >>

Enseignements de Master et Doctorat - Stage annuel à Paris Dauphine

« Les Sciences Sociales et l’Asie du Sud-est »

Du 1^er au 5 février 2010

Centre Universitaire Dauphine
Place du Maréchal Delattre de Tassigny
75016 Paris
Métro Porte Dauphine

Coordinatrice en 2010 : Manuelle Franck (contact)

En 2010, le stage sera organisé du lundi 1er au vendredi 5 février 2010. Il se tiendra en salle P105, à l’Université Paris Dauphine (Escalier face aux ascenseurs, 1^er étage, couloir de gauche en arrivant sur le palier de l’escalier).

Programme :

Lundi :      9h30-10h Introduction                 10-12h Archéologie                  14-16h30 Histoire contemporaine

Mardi :      9h30-13h  Géographie                                                             14h-17h Urbanisme et Ethno-architecture

Mercredi :  9h30-11h30 Histoire moderne

Jeudi :       10-12h 30 Ethnologie 1                                                             14h30-17h Ethnologie 2

Vendredi :  9h30 -12h Sciences éco 1                                                          13h30-16h Sciences éco 2 

Enseignants : B. Brac de la Perrière (Ethnologie, CASE, CNRS/EHESS), B. Formoso (Ethnologie, Paris X),  A. Forest (Histoire, Paris VII, SEDET), M. Franck (Géographie, INALCO), Ch. Goldblum (Urbanisme, IFU), N. Lancret (Urbanisme, Ethno-architecture, École d’architecture de Paris-Belleville), P.-Y. Manguin (Archéologie, EFEO, CASE),  F. Nicolas (Sciences économiques, IFRI), J.Ch. Simon (Sciences économiques, IRD), J. Tadié (Géographie, IRD, Prodig), H. Tertrais (Histoire, Paris 1). 

Objet du cours
Cet enseignement, organisé sous la forme d’un stage d’une semaine, s’adresse aux étudiants en master et aux doctorants en sciences sociales qui se spécialisent sur l’Asie du Sud-est. Par voie de conventions, il peut être validé par les étudiants de Paris X, de Paris I, de Paris VII, de l’IEP de Paris et de l’INALCO, et est aussi ouvert aux étudiants de tous les établissements.

Son objet est le suivant : montrer comment l’histoire, la géographie, l’ethnologie, les sciences économiques et les urbanistes ont abordé l’Asie du Sud-est, tout en dégageant la manière dont certaines particularités historiques, géographiques, sociales et culturelles de cette partie du monde ont pu influencer la constitution des objets de recherche dans ces différentes disciplines. Il s’agit tout à la fois de mettre en relief des traditions scientifiques et des orientations thématiques privilégiées. Éventuellement, il s’agit aussi de souligner l’apport de la région à la constitution de paradigmes disciplinaires, tout en informant les étudiants sur les lacunes constatées. Sur ce dernier point, l’enseignement peut contribuer à un choix plus raisonné des sujets de recherche.

L’une des finalités du projet pédagogique est de faire découvrir aux étudiants de telle ou telle discipline ce qui se fait sur la région dans les champs connexes du savoir et, par rapport à des phénomènes ou problèmes particuliers, de dégager des différences d’approche, qui peuvent s’inscrire ou non dans la complémentarité. En ce sens, l’idée a été retenue de consacrer les dernières heures du stage à une petite table ronde réunissant les étudiants et des représentants de chaque discipline autour d’un thème fédérateur, renouvelé chaque année.

Publication : HCMC in comparative perspectives

Urbanization, Migration, and Poverty in a Vietnamese Metropolis: Ho Chi Minh City in Comparative Perspectives

Hy V. Luong (Ed.)

With the shift to a market economy, Ho Chi Minh City became a magnet for migrants and experienced rapid growth. Migration provides labor for economic growth in Ho Chi Minh City, and remittances sent by migrants to rural communities help to limit urban-rural inequality. But rural-urban migration creates a heavy burden for the city's physical and social infrastructure.

Urbanization, Migration, and Poverty in a Vietnamese Metropolis presents the results of a major interdisciplinary research project that gathered data on more than one thousand households in Ho Chi Minh City over a three-year period, and on migration flows at the urban destination and in four sending communities in different regions of Vietnam. The study shows that migration to Ho Chi Minh City has been shaped both by urban-rural inequality and by regionally diverse socio-cultural dynamics. It also demonstrates that despite official claims concerning poverty reduction in Ho Chi Minh City, urban poverty rose, particularly among migrants. The research findings indicate that microcredit and other poverty reduction programs had little impact on the socio-economic mobility of households, but that the well-being of many households improved as a result of growth-related economic opportunities as well as the effects of social networks and processes of household formation.

HY V. Luong is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.

Publication year: 2009; ISBN: 978-9971-69-455-5;  Paperback  US$28.00  S$38.00

Appel à contributions : Dynamic City

Dynamic City: Land, Water and Culture

The period of rapid urbanization triggered in the 1980s and ‘90s by global financial deregulation, the breakdown of the Cold War, and the emergence of internet and mobile phone connectivity has already produced several waves of academic discourse on the Dynamic City. Throughout Asia, the relation between landscape, water and culture has always held a privileged position – which is now being seriously threatened as both a spatial reality and socio-cultural perception. Modernist enthusiasms--with echoes of constructivism and futurism--and dystopic fears--extending critiques of the over stimulation and loss of humanism of the modern metropolis--have both marked the polarity of Dynamic City discourse. Yet, new arrivals to the city continue to seek out its promise of personal freedom, mobility, and new subjectivities producing the greatest challenges in the latest wave of urbanization: the balance between growth and pressures on the environment. Together these conditions, perceptions, and anticipations form the land, water and cultural dynamics of the contemporary city.

This call for submissions to a special theme issue of Nakhara seeks ways to ground the multiple cacophonous conversations on the Dynamic City by bringing together diverse examples of environmental design practices that explore the ecological, economic, political, or social dynamics between land, water and culture in this new urban condition. Authors from any discipline related to these issues are encouraged to submit manuscripts that not only critically examine the recent history of urbanization and globalization, but also theorize and formulate ways forward in creating new forms of practice within an increasingly Dynamic City.

Editor in Chief:
Associate Professor Brian McGrath, Parsons The New School for Design, USA  
Guest Editors:   
Associate Professor Dr. Kelly Shannon, KU Leuven, Belgium
Associate Professor Sharon Haar, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA

Schedule:

Call for papers              October 2009 - January 2010

Reviewing Papers          February 2009 - May 2010

Amendment                   May – July 2010

Publish                          September 2010

Manuscripts are due January 31, 2010

Manuscripts can be sent electronically to: jnakhara@chula.ac.th

More information and Submission Guidelines: www.arch.chula.ac.th/nakhara