Penny Dan, Hall Tegan, Evans Damian, Polkinghorne Martin
School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia;
School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Mar 12;116(11):4871-4876. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1821460116. Epub 2019 Feb 25.
Alternative models exist for the movement of large urban populations following the 15th-century CE abandonment of Angkor, Cambodia. One model emphasizes an urban diaspora following the implosion of state control in the capital related, in part, to hydroclimatic variability. An alternative model suggests a more complex picture and a gradual rather than catastrophic demographic movement. No decisive empirical data exist to distinguish between these two competing models. Here we show that the intensity of land use within the economic and administrative core of the city began to decline more than one century before the Ayutthayan invasion that conventionally marks the end of the Angkor Period. Using paleobotanical and stratigraphic data derived from radiometrically dated sediment cores extracted from the 12th-century walled city of Angkor Thom, we show that indicia for burning, forest disturbance, and soil erosion all decline as early as the first decades of the 14th century CE, and that the moat of Angkor Thom was no longer being maintained by the end of the 14th century. These data indicate a protracted decline in occupation within the economic and administrative core of the city, rather than an abrupt demographic collapse, suggesting the focus of power began to shift to urban centers outside of the capital during the 14th century.
公元15世纪柬埔寨吴哥城被废弃后，关于大型城市人口迁移存在多种不同模式。一种模式强调，随着首都国家控制的瓦解（部分原因与水文气候变化有关），城市人口出现了离散。另一种模式则描绘了一幅更为复杂的图景，认为人口迁移是渐进的，而非灾难性的。目前尚无决定性的实证数据来区分这两种相互竞争的模式。在此，我们表明，在传统上标志着吴哥时期结束的阿瑜陀耶入侵之前一个多世纪，城市经济和行政核心区域的土地利用强度就开始下降。利用从12世纪有城墙的吴哥通王城提取的经放射性测年的沉积岩芯获得的古植物学和地层数据，我们发现，早在公元14世纪头几十年，燃烧、森林干扰和土壤侵蚀的迹象就都已减少，到14世纪末，吴哥通王城的护城河已不再得到维护。这些数据表明，城市经济和行政核心区域的人口长期减少，而非人口突然崩溃，这意味着14世纪时权力中心开始向首都以外的城市中心转移。
