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The Angkor Vihara Project: Formative Results From "Buddhist Terrace"/Prah Vihar Excavations at Angkor Thom, Cambodia (c. 13th-16th Centuries) Conducted in 2019 and 2022

Archaeology Centre, University of Toronto, Canada

School of Humanities Yale-NUS College, Singapore

The Angkor Vihara Project, a collaborative campaign between the Archaeology Centre of the University of Toronto (ACUT) and Cambodia's APSARA National Authority, has sought to clarify both the religious transition and syncretism between Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist (Brahmano-Buddhist) temple (prasat) construction and Theravada (Pali) Buddhist monastic construction. This unique religious phenomenon, one which proves pivotal to both ancient and modern Cambodian religious history, is thought to have occurred beginning in the mid-late 13th century, and features primarily within the civic-ceremonial citadel of Angkor Thom, where upwards of seventy prayer-halls/vihara (known archaeologically as “Buddhist Terraces” and as prah vihar in Khmer) have been identified through nearly a century of survey work verified in 2017 and 2018. Archaeological campaigns conducted by the Angkor Vihara Project in 2019 and 2022 have focused on the structural mapping, imaging, and excavation of these structures alongside artifactual and radiometric analysis. Our results have not only established prah vihar as prominent and overwhelmingly abundant religious architectures from the 14th century onwards, but also as focal points of community, social organization, and microcosms of a larger politico-religious order embedded within architecture in a similar manner to prasat. This presentation will primarily discuss the material results and formative interpretations generated from both campaigns, but will also briefly explore the nature of how past and present religious spaces were reconciled at Angkor Thom, a palimpsest featuring six centuries of religious construction, ideas key to understanding the successful dissemination of prah vihar and thus monastic-focused Theravada Buddhism in general.