The Angkor hydraulic-network debate

Record summary

Angkor’s reservoirs, canals, embankments and urban settlements have been used to reconstruct a large, networked hydraulic landscape. Remote sensing, excavation, sediment studies and inscriptions support substantial water-management infrastructure, while scholars debate whether changing monsoon regimes, infrastructure failure, warfare, trade shifts or social reorganization contributed to Angkor’s transformation after the fourteenth century. The lead is useful for comparing environmental stress with urban change and population movement. It does not establish that a single drought or hydraulic failure caused abandonment.