Angkor Thom, une utopie réalisée? Structuration de l'espace et modèle indien d'urbanisme dans le Cambodge ancien

Abstract

Angkor Thom, ancienne capitale royale à l'époque angko- rienne aujourd'hui recouverte par la forêt, fait l'objet, depuis 2000, d'une exploration méthodique menée à l'échelle du site (9000000 m2) et fondée, dans une première phase, sur des prospections morphologiques et pédologiques, des levés topographiques et des sondages stratigraphiques ponctuels. La méthode mise en place, relevant d'une archéologie urbaine, a permis la découverte d'un grand nombre de structures - chaussées, fossés, canaux, voies d'eau- dont l'échelle, la fonction et la régularité constituent des données urbaines nouvelles essentielles. Un plan schématique de la ville dans son dernier état montre l'ensemble des grands réseaux urbains découverts à ce jour. L'auteur souligne le caractère urbain du site et insiste sur la régularité de sa structuration. Le caractère géométrique de la figure dessinée par un certain nombre des structures mises au jour incite à rechercher l'application d'un modèle théorique. L'auteur souligne le faisceau d'affinités qui existe entre les données archéologiques et les prescriptions urbaines provenant des traités indiens de l'habitat. Sachant qu'aucun plan de capitale royale ancienne indienne conforme aux traités n'a été réellement reconnu à ce jour, la capitale khmère apparaîtrait alors comme une utopie, au sens propre du terme, réalisée au-delà des mers.

Uncovering archaeological landscapes at Angkor using lidar

“…to walled urban enclosures in the beginning of the second millennium C.E. (2). Within this conventional model, the assumption has always been that the enclosure walls or moats of the great monuments delimited densely populated urban environments.…”

“…Based on that body of research, archaeologists have arrived at a clear understanding of the developmental sequence of the public architecture of Angkor. Until recently, however, Angkor has remained very poorly understood as an inhabited space (1)(2)(3). In general, the use of masonry was limited to religious architecture, and most other components of the built environment-from the palaces of Angkor's kings to the vernacular architecture of the common people-were made of perishable materials such as wood and thatch and have not survived in the archaeological record.…”

“…Nonetheless, subtle traces of these ephemeral cities remain inscribed into the surface of the Cambodian landscape even centuries later, in the form of topographic variations that indicate the former existence of roads, canals, ponds, field walls, occupation mounds, and other basic elements of the urban and agricultural networks (1). In the past 20 y, a series of archaeological mapping projects have used remote sensing techniques to map those traces at Angkor, with a view to elucidating the development of urban form and of hydraulic engineering over time and space (2,4,5).…”

“…Around the central monuments of Angkor, however, thousands of hectares of dense vegetation cover now obscure the remnant contours of the medieval cityscape from conventional remote sensing instruments, and ground-based surveys of the topography in the area have been fragmentary and incomplete (2). The problem that has thus arisen is that two quite different interpretations of habitat on the Angkor plain are possible from previous data (3): on the one hand, a view of urbanism as a succession of discrete, insular spaces that are functionally and morphologically distinct from an essentially "nonurban" hinterland (2, 10); and on the other hand, a view of Angkor as a vast, low-density urban complex with a high degree of operational and functional interdependency with a densely populated urban center (4,5).…”

Precise Visualization Method for Cultural Heritage-the Case of High-Resolution Read Relief Image Map Used for Study of Royal City of Angkor Thom, Cambodia

“…Gaucher counted a total of 2895 ponds (Gaucher, 2004). They include Beng Thom and other large ponds, but most are less than 1000m 2 .…”