Angkor Borei ( km, អង្គរបូរី, ) is a district located in
Takéo Province, in southern
Cambodia
Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand ...
. According to the 1998 census of Cambodia, it had a population of 44,980.
Administration
The district has 6 communes, 34 villages (as of 2019).
History
This ancient city was an important settlement of the
Kingdom of Funan
Funan (; km, ហ៊្វូណន, ; vi, Phù Nam, Chữ Hán: ) was the name given by Chinese cartographers, geographers and writers to an ancient Indianized state—or, rather a loose network of states ''(Mandala)''—located in mainla ...
and may have been its capital. It may have been the Thinae, or Sinae Metropolis located by
Claudius Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importa ...
as the farthest known city to the east in his ''Geography''.
The site was first excavated in 1996 and was again excavated in 1999 as part of the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project. During the 1996 excavation, the
University of Hawaii and the
Royal University of Fine Arts initiated the excavation and focused on the sociopolitical complexity from 500 BC to 500 AD. This first excavation, however, was just preliminary research. The first objectives were:
1) Documentation of the site's layout and the range of its archaeological features
2) Evaluation of the integrity of subsurface materials and description of the site's stratigraphy
3) Collection of samples for dating portions of the archaeological site
4) Reconstructing the hydrology and natural environment of the early historic period in this region
In this site various archaeological methods were used such as surface survey and mapping, test excavations, auger sampling and coring, and trenching with a backhoe.
Unfortunately, the archeological project was disturbed by looting and illicit trafficking of Khmer antiquities, which continues as a serious problem into the 21st century.
[Miriam T. Stark and P. Brion Griffin, “Archaeological Research and Cultural Heritage Management in Cambodia's Mekong Delta: The Search for the ‘Cradle of Khmer Civilization,’” in ''Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past'', ed. by Yorke Rowan and Uzi Baram, Walnut Creek, California: Altamira Press, 2004, 117–141.]
It is the birthplace of
Norodom, King of Cambodia from 1860 to 1904.
See also
*
Angkor Borei and Phnom Da
References
{{Districts of Cambodia
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Funan
Districts of Takéo province