The vast agro-urban settlements that developed in the humid tropics of Mesoamerica and Asia contained both elite civic-ceremonial spaces and sprawling metropolitan areas. Recent studies have suggested that both local autonomy and elite policies facilitated the development of these settlements; however, studies have been limited by a lack of detail in considering how, when, and why these factors contributed to the evolution of these sites. In this paper, we use a fine-grained diachronic analysis of Angkor’s landscape to identify both the state-level policies and infrastructure and bottom-up organization that spurred the growth of Angkor as the world’s most extensive pre-industrial settlement complex. This degree of diachronic detail is unique for the ancient world. We observe that Angkor’s low-density metropolitan area and higher-density civic-ceremonial center grew at different rates and independently of one another. While local historical factors contributed to these developments, we argue that future comparative studies might identify similar patterns.

在中美洲和亚洲潮湿的热带地区发展起来的广阔的农业城市聚落既包含精英的公民礼仪空间，也包含庞大的大都市区。最近的研究表明，地方自治和精英政策促进了这些定居点的发展；然而，由于在考虑这些因素如何、何时以及为何促成这些遗址的演变方面缺乏细节，研究受到了限制。在本文中，我们对吴哥的景观进行了细粒度的历时分析，以确定促使吴哥发展成为世界上最广泛的前工业化聚落综合体的国家级政策和基础设施以及自下而上的组织。这种历时细节的程度对于古代世界来说是独一无二的。我们观察到吴哥的低密度都市区和高密度的市政礼仪中心以不同的速度增长，而且彼此独立。虽然当地的历史因素促成了这些发展，但我们认为未来的比较研究可能会发现类似的模式。