SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA—The Cambodia Daily reports that archaeologists Mitch Hendrickson of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Phon Kaseka of the Royal Academy of Cambodia have been collecting charcoal samples as they excavate smelters that produced iron for Angkor some 1,000 years ago. They estimate that it took three to four tons of charcoal to smelt one ton of iron ore. The charcoal samples will help the scientists to determine what kind of trees were preferred for fueling the furnaces. “There is no record of a specific management system for forest usage, but we presume they would have had one,” Hendrickson said. Different trees would have probably been used to fire ceramics or cast bronze. Hendrickson and Kaseka hope that other researchers will add information on tree use at Angkor to their new database. For more, go to “Angkor Urban Sprawl.”
