The understanding of Angkor’s rise and fall has been dramatically transformed by the shift in perspective from the temple to the landscape. Since the 1990s, access to a continuous range of remote sensing imagery captured via aerial photography, satellites and lidar has shed light both on the scale and spatial reach of settlements and infrastructure built by the former Khmer Empire. Ground surveys at sites within Angkor and across its provincial territories further revealed how such practices varied in response to historical events and local geography. For nearly a quarter century, the late Damian Evans dedicated his research to documenting the ancient landscapes of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand and was a globally renowned expert in the field of aerial and remote sensing. The presentations in this special symposium offer tribute to his research and legacy by reflecting on the impact of his work at sites before, after and beyond Angkor.

In Honorarium Dr Damian Evans

Dr Evans has worked on the archaeology of Angkor since the late 1990s as part of the Greater Angkor Project, a collaborative, multi-disciplinary research program involving the University of Sydney, the APSARA National Authority and the EFEO. He earned his PhD from the University of Sydney in 2007, and was founding Director of the University’s Research Centre in Siem Reap from 2007 to 2015. His research lies at the intersection of applied geosciences and archaeology, and involves using advanced geospatial technologies to uncover, map and analyse pre-modern archaeological landscapes with a view to understanding long-term socio-ecological dynamics. He was the architect of the 2012 lidar campaign at Angkor, and in 2015 he joined the EFEO to establish and oversee a new program of airborne laser scanning, the Cambodian Archaeological Lidar Initiative (CALI), followed by the Archaeoscape.ai project, expanding the scope of research to other parts of Southeast Asia and into the realm of artificial intelligence. Damian Evans died prematurely on 12 September 2023 in Paris, France.