SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA—Archaeologists have definitively identified the ruins of an ancient city in the mountains of northwestern Cambodia as Mahendraparvata, a short-lived capital of the early Khmer Empire from the late eighth to early ninth centuries A.D., Live Science reports. Inscriptions had placed the Phnom Klen plateau as the site of the city, which predates nearby Angkor by centuries. Using airborne laser scanning, Damian Evans of the École Française d’Extrême-Orient and his colleagues mapped the city and found that it was arranged in an extensive grid pattern, the earliest example of such urban planning in the area. Through on-the-ground survey, the team also identified more than 600 archaeological features, including temple sites marked by sandstone and brick pedestals and an extensive water management system that was never completed. A massive reservoir, carved out of the natural bedrock, does not appear to have been connected to an irrigation system. Evans said that this lack of infrastructure—a necessity for agriculture—could explain why the city was left incomplete. “Now, having a very complete picture of the whole, greater Angkor area and a finalized map of the whole thing, we can start to do some pretty sophisticated modeling of things like population and growth over time,” he added. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. To read more about locating sites in the region using lidar, go to “Angkor Urban Sprawl,” one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2016.
