Heritage site

Angkor Borei

អង្គរបុរី

Angkor Borei (អង្គរបុរី) is an archaeological site and town in Angkor Borei district, Takeo province, at the western edge of the Mekong delta.[1][2] Its walls once enclosed at least 300 hectares, and radiocarbon dates show people living there by the 5th or 4th century BCE.[2] The archaeologist Miriam Stark and others regard it as a major center, and possibly a capital, of the early state that Chinese records called Funan.[3][4] In 2020 Cambodia submitted Angkor Borei and the nearby hill of Phnom Da to UNESCO's Tentative List of World Heritage sites.[5]

History

Stark writes that three consistent sets of radiocarbon dates, from separate parts of the site, place its first settlement in the late 5th or early 4th century BCE, about 500 years before Chinese writers described Funan.[2] Bishop, Sanderson and Stark date the first occupation to the 4th century BCE.[6] French researchers held that Angkor Borei was one of Funan's first capitals, ruled by its elites until power shifted north in the 7th century.[2] Stark writes that the archaeological evidence supports the view that it was a large regional center in the Funan period, and that its importance continued through the pre-Angkorian period.[3] Michael Vickery wrote that archaeology would decide whether Funan's capital was Ba Phnom or Angkor Borei. In his view the remains at Angkor Borei gave it the lead.[4] Most of the dated brick monuments in the area are later than 500 CE, and at least three date from the Angkorian period.[3]

Stark writes that many Khmers regard Angkor Borei as the birthplace of Khmer civilization. One reason is its link with Kok Thlok and the origin story of Preah Thaong; a reservoir at the center of the site bears his name. She adds that no local inscription ties the site directly to the founding of Cambodia.[2]

Cambodia's UNESCO submission states that the site yielded the oldest surviving dated inscription in Khmer.[5] Fact Crescendo, citing the historian Vong Sotheara, identifies it as K. 600, found in Angkor Borei district.[7] Stark dates the earliest Khmer inscription from the site to 611 CE.[2]

The site

Stark describes Angkor Borei at its peak as a walled settlement of at least 300 hectares with more than a dozen brick monuments.[2] Cambodia's UNESCO submission describes a large wall of brick and soil with moats both inside and outside it.[5] The Cambodia Daily wrote in 2000 that parts of the wall stood up to 8 meters high. The wall went up in two stages: first an earth bank, later topped with brick.[8] Stark writes that almost all standing remains have since been taken apart and their materials reused in new buildings or as road fill. What is left shows as mounds of rubble and water works, and parts of the old moat are now farmed.[2][3]

At Vat Komnou, near the center of the site, excavations in 1999 and 2000 uncovered a cemetery used from about 200 BCE to 200 CE. It held at least 45 burials, with pottery, beads and animal remains placed with the dead.[2] Stark calls it the largest collection of ancient human remains yet studied in Cambodia.[3]

Canals

Pierre Paris saw what looked like canals between Angkor Borei and Oc Eo on aerial photographs in 1931 and 1941.[2] The canals link Angkor Borei with sites along the Takeo River, and the larger Paris 4 canal runs to Oc Eo, about 80 kilometers to the south in Vietnam.[3][9] Luminescence dating places the digging of the canals between the first millennium BCE and the first millennium CE.[6][9] The UNESCO submission notes that some of the old canals and water tanks are still in use.[5]

Lower Mekong Archaeological Project

Since 1996 the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project, co-directed by Stark of the University of Hawaii and Chuch Phoeurn of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, has worked in and around Angkor Borei at the ministry's invitation.[2] Stark wrote in 2006 that more than 30 graduates of the archaeology faculty of the Royal University of Fine Arts had taken part in its fieldwork. A second phase, from 2003, surveyed the Takeo River basin.[3]

Museum

The Angkor Borei Museum (សារមន្ទីរអង្គរបុរី) opened in 1999 in a pagoda building, and the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts improved its exhibits in 2020. It shows ceramics, pottery, statues and stone steles.[10][11] Stark writes that the European Union paid for the museum, in consultation with the project, and that its exhibits are described in Khmer, English and French.[2]

Phnom Da

Phnom Da, a hill about 3 kilometers south of the town, holds two pre-Angkorian temples, Phnom Da and Asram Maha Rosei.[2][10] Its statues gave their name to the Phnom Da style, considered the earliest style of Khmer art.[12] Their dates are debated: they were first placed in the early 6th century, and Nancy Dowling argues for the middle of the 7th century.[13][14] The great Vishnu from Phnom Da stands in the National Museum in Phnom Penh.[12][13]

The town today

Around 2001 Stark counted about 6,000 people in the town built on top of the site, and wrote that it was becoming a destination for Khmer and foreign visitors, in part because of Phnom Da.[2] In the 2019 census Angkor Borei commune had 11,134 people and the district 40,860.[15]

References

  1. ↑ Into Cambodia, Takéo Province (undated)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 Miriam T. Stark, New Perspectives on Early Cambodia from the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project (about 2001)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Miriam T. Stark, Pre-Angkorian Settlement Trends in Cambodia's Mekong Delta and the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project, Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 26 (2006)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Angkor Database, summary of Michael Vickery, Funan Reviewed: Deconstructing the Ancients, BEFEO 90/91 (2003)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 UNESCO World Heritage Centre, The Site of Angkor Borei and Phnom Da, Tentative List (submitted March 27, 2020)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 P. Bishop, D. C. W. Sanderson and M. T. Stark, OSL and radiocarbon dating of a pre-Angkorian canal in the Mekong delta, southern Cambodia, Journal of Archaeological Science 31(3) (2004)
  7. ↑ Fact Crescendo Cambodia, Jay Udom, An Inscription Falsely Claimed as One Recovered at Angkor Borey (December 12, 2023)
  8. ↑ The Cambodia Daily, Kay Kimsong, Artifacts Could Prove Ancient City is Older Than Thought (July 18, 2000)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 D. C. W. Sanderson, P. Bishop, M. T. Stark, S. Alexander and D. Penny, Luminescence dating of canal sediments from Angkor Borei, Mekong Delta, southern Cambodia, Quaternary Geochronology 2 (2007)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Cambodianess, Elise Roy, Visiting the Angkor Borei Museum and Phnom Da Temple Site (August 10, 2025)
  11. ↑ Angkor Database, summary of Miriam T. Stark, New Perspectives on Early Cambodia from the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project (undated)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Cambodianess, Ky Chamna, Picture of the Day: Vishnu and the Phnom Da Art Style (March 14, 2026)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Angkor Database, Vishnu, Rama, Balarama, Phnom Da (undated)
  14. ↑ Nancy H. Dowling, A New Date for the Phnom Da Images and Its Implications for Early Cambodia, Asian Perspectives 38(1) (1999)
  15. ↑ National Institute of Statistics, Ministry of Planning, General Population Census of the Kingdom of Cambodia 2019: National Report on Final Census Results (2020)


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This page was last edited on 11 October 2026, at 02:15.