Living in the shadow of Angkor : responses and strategies of upland social groups to polity demise in the late- to post-Angkor period

Factors influencing the decline of civilizations may differentially affect communities on the margins of a collapsing society. How these groups fare during societal decline is central to key archaeological questions concerning population response and societal re-emergence. Archaeological research on the Late Angkorian era maintains a lowland-centric focus, mainly due to previous lack of evidence for highland groups' biological, economic and cultural responses to state collapse. However, by the late 14th century AD and the decline of the great kingdom of Angkor, some ethnic minorities had socially and geographically distanced themselves in the Cardamom Mountains of southern Cambodia. Their existence is known only from burial sites that are unique relative to rituals recorded in Khmer history: re-burial of human bone in log coffins and exotic ceramics, on exposed rock ledges. The sites hold previously untapped information on demographics, health, environmental conditions, and trade relationships, which are essential for answering archaeological questions about responses of marginal cultures in an era of political, environmental, and economic change. Using novel integrations of methods to examine the archaeological information from different perspectives, we will develop the first-ever characterization of a highland culture’s lifeways and how they fared in the Late Angkorian era.