The Angkor Vihara Project: Buddhist Archaeology and Urban-Religious Development along Angkor Thom’s East Gate Road/Thvear Khmoch

Archaeological research investigating the society-wide adoption of Theravada Buddhism during the final centuries of the Cambodian Angkorian Empire (c. 13th-15th centuries CE) has emphasized the critical role of prayer halls (vihara/preah vihear) in spreading new religious practices, fostering community, and shaping urban development, while also replacing earlier Hindu temple-complexes as pivots of Cambodian religious and social life. Work within the 12th-century civic-ceremonial centre of Angkor Thom by the Angkor Vihara Project, a collaboration between the University of Toronto’s Archaeology Centre and Cambodia’s APSARA National Authority, has revealed a dense, multifaceted landscape of over seventy monastic substructures (“Buddhist Terraces”) alongside converted Hindu temples and Buddhist reliquaries/stupa. A series of four field campaigns between 2019-2024 have demonstrated that these complexes are essential not only for understanding religious transition and continuity between architectural traditions, but also for assessing the evolution of Angkor Thom’s urban space over time during a critical period of geopolitical and environmental collapse. This lecture will present new excavation data from three “Buddhist Terrace” sites along Angkor Thom’s eastern artery between the Bayon and Thvear Khmoch/“Gate of the Dead,” illustrating broader trends in changing religious and urban practices during Angkor’s final centuries and beyond.