 Okay, let's make a start. Well, good morning to everyone who's tuning in from the UK good afternoon if you're in Helsinki. Good evening if you're in Phnom Penh. Welcome to the second of the Southeast Asian academic art academic program co-hosted with the center of Southeast Asian studies at SOAS. Today we're very honored to have Veronica Walker-Vadillo with us. And I'd like to just briefly introduce Veronica now. She's going to talk about River Road to Angkor, human eco-dynamics of a tropical river basin. And it's a very interesting abstract she has here. And she says here that from the very first academic studies of Angkor, researchers have assumed that rivers played an important role in the establishment of this polity. But despite this acknowledgement, most of the research conducted on Angkor has deployed a terrestrial approach to the study of this polity, focusing on agriculture and urbanism. So this presentation will shift the focus to the region's amphibious nature and lay out the main characteristics of Angkor's complex cultural responses to its watery environment. This will be done by analyzing the extensive corpus of nautical iconography in the context of human environment interactions. And nautical iconography is unique in as much as it presents a wealth of information of activities that took place on board vessels. From pilgrimages to warfare, festivals and elaborated rituals performed on water, both in man-made and natural spaces. Additionally, they show that the people of Angkor tapped into Indian iconography to modify their vessels, creating an eclectic tradition that survives, albeit modified, in the royal barges of Thailand. In this talk, she will discuss how Angkor's fluvial culture points to political and cosmological responses to the amphibious landscape they inhabited and provided the kings of Angkor with a religious framework, with which they exerted control of the river network and the people living in and around it. The study applies the interdisciplinary theoretical framework known as the maritime cultural landscape, incorporating data from environmental sciences, archaeology, nautical technology, ethnography and history. So I think we are in for a very rich webinar today. And I'd just like to say a few words about Veronica. She's a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Arts, archaeology at the University of Helsinki, where she is the principal investigator of a project, the ports and harbours of Southeast Asia entanglements of the maritime Silk Road in the early modern period. That's the late 14th to early 17th century, funded by the University of Helsinki. In fact, she was a core research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for advanced studies, where she studied semi-nomadic fishing communities in the lower Mekong, and their role in state development. She obtained her PhD in archaeology from the University of Oxford, where she specialized in Southeast Asian maritime archaeology. And she's particularly interested in theory and methods that bring together archaeology, iconography, ecology and ethnography for the study of past maritime societies. Her work on waterborne networks in Southeast Asia examines the entanglement between culture and environment, first by applying the maritime cultural landscape, and lately by using environmental approaches like historical ecology and human techniques. She's the co-editor of cultural studies in maritime and underwater archaeology, published by the British Archaeological Review, and she's coordinator of the webinar series down by the water, Global Conversations in Maritime Archaeology. She's also a freelance writer for Historia National Geographic. And I should also mention that she is recently won an award from the Institute for Southeast Asian Archaeology. For her article in the Spuffer Journal, Ankur's Riverine Network in 2019, and just recently at the end of November, she published a chapter in a new book, The Archaeology of Knowledge Traditions of the Indian Ocean World, published by Rautle, I believe, in the end of November, edited by Himanshu Prabhare. So without much further ado, I'd like to welcome Veronica to give us this webinar, and we hope that in about 45 minutes time, we'll have some time for questions. We're looking forward to taking your questions. So please take it away, Veronica. Thank you very much for that introduction. And thank you so much for inviting me here. I'm very honored and a great pleasure of giving this talk here. And I want to start off by saying that the title is an homage to Milton Osborne's book River Road to China, which is a book about the French Meccan River Exploration in the 19th century. I really enjoyed the book and I thoroughly recommend it. It really highlights the difficulties of navigating that kind of environment. But I also think that the title invites the reader to ask what can we learn about a culture if we shift the focus from land to water. And throughout this talk, you will hear constant references to the term maritime and maritime. So it is worth pointing out at the very beginning of the talk, what I mean by this. So taking literally the term refers to the sea, but in maritime archaeology we recognize that waterways are fluid interconnected environments defined by their use by boat. And all the rivers, lakes, and seas have their own characteristics. We do not recognize boundaries between them, as most cultures who used and use them nowadays do. So the focus of the stock is the anchor empire, which we all know developed in Cambodia between the ninth and the 15th century of the common era. Current studies recognize anchor as an agrarian state whose main characteristics are its extensive waterworks, its monumental remains and the exploitation of rice agriculture. We also know from the early 20th century that anchor used rivers for communication, as many of its monumental remains are located in the proximity of rivers and lakes. Most if not all of the work conducted on anchor so far has applied this terrestrial perspective, with little engagement to anchor's connections to its watery spaces. Did anchor simply rely on waterways for transport or are there other aspects that can be identified as part of an emerging plurial cultural landscape that could justify the use of maritime perspectives. So if we look at the environment we need to realize that the Mecon River basin is a region of changing landscapes. The rainy season, the water levels increased dramatically inundating large proportions of the landscape. However, during the dry season, most of the land dries up. This creates a stark contrast in the landscape forcing local communities to live in what could be described as an amphibious landscape. Now in this maps you can get a grasp of how the landscape change over the course of the year. And it still does. And with it to water-related resources like fish stocks and the reach of waterborne transport. Water was not only important to drink and to irrigate rice fields, but it also provided fish, which has tradition of being the main source of protein in the Khmer diet, and the main ingredient of the widely consumed local fish paste known as prahok. This research was not permanent, but came and went with floods as fish follow strict migration patterns throughout the year. Likewise, regions that may not have been accessible during the dry season were made accessible when water surface reaches peak at the end of the rainy season. We can therefore get a sense of how important water was for the people of Angkor and how it affected its everyday life. Apart from Khmer origin stories that recognize their land is emerging from the water, Angkor's use of the watery space is reflected in Angkorian nautical iconography, which is extensively represented in the beryllium of Angkor. For my doctoral studies, I surveyed the temples of Angkor to document nautical iconography. This corpus resulted in the documentation of 34 nautical scenes spread throughout several temples. Although the vast majority appear in the temples of Bantajma, Bayon, and Prakan, this scene depict 106 boats, all of which are used in a variety of settings like warfare, rituals, celebrations, pilgrimages, fishing, and so on. Most of them are lavishly decorated and associated with the elite, but a few of them are simple fishing vessels with no decorations. Both are also used in different environments from man-made ponds to natural environments. So based on the iconography and the environment, it seems clear that the people of Angkor developed a particular set of traits that could be identified as part of a riverine cultural landscape. Therefore, we should consider how shifting the research paradigm from land to water could help us to bring nuance to our understanding of Angkorian culture. But what is the maritime gaze? So maritime archaeology is a field of research where the focus is placed on human interactions with their wary environment, something that often results in the development of traits that we can define as a maritime cultural landscape. These traits are almost always connected to the use of boats to colonize rivers, lakes, or seas. The term maritime cultural landscape was coined by Christopher Westerdell in the 1980s when he realized that in order to fully understand shipwrecks and the Baltic, we could contextualize them with other associated remains that had not received as much attention. So other elements like ports, lighthouses, toponymy, fault-tales, all these Westerdell contents are all part of the single ecological unit that explains how people overcame their fear of water and proceeded to exploit its resources. So to understand this maritime cultural landscape is important to engage in a wide variety of data, which often results in the use of interdisciplinary approaches that include archaeology, history, ethnography, iconography, traditional ecological knowledge, and environmental studies. The concept fits really well with other approaches nowadays in environmental humanities. So things like the human eco-dynamics and historical ecology are all frameworks that favor the long-term study of human-environment interactions. This is partly because maritime communities tend to be quite conservative. While an optimal solution has been reached in terms of an optical design, change seems superfluous because of the risk that it's involved. If a new hull design is flawed, it can cause the ship to sink, and consequently you can lose lives in goods or both. But to say that maritime communities never change would be a mistake. We need to recognize that change happens. And in the case of maritime communities, once a design or material outperforms the traditional one, change and loss of knowledge can happen within a generation or two. So cautions are always being asserted when using ethnographic and historical data. But in any case, it is a wealth of information that we can gain from that. So how do we apply this maritime gaze? Well, it is just a shift in the way that we look at things. So evaluating how the elements we want to study impact or effect ships, shipping, and whatever activities are taking place on board. So for example, if we look at these two images, we see that the masonry bridge of the span, Pactos, poses a risk to navigation because the space between the spans, so between the two pillars, is long and narrow. In terms of navigation, if we apply this maritime perspective, we need to conclude that whomever made this bridge was closing the river on purpose. On the other side, we have the bamboo bridge of Kampongchamp, which is constructed in this mantle every year. The material of which it is made allows for the integration of large gaps between the pillars that can be used by boats to safely cross to the other side. So from a navigational point of view, this type of a structure provides a solution for land and transport, as they can both use the same space seamlessly. There are many more nuances to this that you can find in my Spatha article that I hated discussed before. And so the only thing that we need to point out is that not the whole, it is not necessary that the whole of the culture is maritime or terrestrial. In the same culture you can find some elements that pertain to terrestrial perspectives and some other belong to more nuanced maritime perspectives. So in what follows, I want to focus on ships as the maximum exponent of maritimity in a culture. I will do this by examining the concept of the living boat in Khmer culture in Cambodia. The practices that gave way to the perception of boats as living entities and the way these practices were harnessed by the elite of Angkor to exert their power at the time. I will discuss how the nature of the boat's symbolic value should not be sought in exhaustionous influences, but rather in indigenous phenomena related to the material of which boats are made, the environment in which they are used, and a very ancient Khmer understanding of the order of the world. I will do this by discussing traditional boat building practices in Cambodia, which have been traced to the Angkor period. So to around the 13th century, through archeological evidence, and I will explore how Khmer understanding of the natural order set the stage for the profound cultural significance of boats in Angkorian culture. Follow the theoretical framework of the maritime cultural landscape, this analysis incorporates data from traditional archeological knowledge, ethnography, archeology, history, and iconography. If you have particular questions about the methods that I followed, I'm very happy to answer them in the Q&A session. So, a Cambodian proverb says, when you go into the river, the crocodile is waiting for you, when you climb up the bank, the tiger awaits you. These words act as a reminder of the precarious place that the Khmer people hold in nature. Perched between impenetrable forests and untimable rivers, the Khmer worldview reflects a duality that splits the world into domesticated spaces and wild forests. The domesticated space corresponds to the village called the strok, which was the realm of the humans. A piece of land extracted from the forest that was transformed into a safe space through the clearing of the trees and the domestication of the wild spirits, the nyakta, that inhabited the land. These otherworldly guardians offer protection to the community so long rituals and offerings were observed and people behaved correctly. Exogenous religions like Hinduism and Buddhism were later incorporated into this understanding of the world, assigning them a place in the village. Outside the domestic bubble, a vast land of wild forests extended, inherited by ambiguous wild spirits, a type of undefined, catonic-like entities who are considered the owners of the land and the water. For locals, they are guardians, people we cannot see, punishers and healers, sometimes answer such, sometimes not. As owners of these resources needed by humans, these entities were, and still are, entangled in complex ways with social systems. They are the arbiters of justice and morality, and they also have a role to play within the local economy since they control the access to goods. This sets the stage for transactional exchanges between these supernatural entities who own the resources and humans who need to act in specific ways to gain access to them. Although current practices are tightly intertwined with Buddhist and Brahmatic traditions, anthropological studies have identified strong pre-Indian strata that has survived and continues to thrive even today. While the prey and the stork are opposing spaces in the Khmer world, these are not immutable landscapes. Forests can be transformed into domesticated spaces, and the forest can take over these spaces if the proper ritual and good behavior are not followed. So even though there is a clear demarcation between the prey and the stork, there is also a fluid relationship between them. So this division of space is crucial for understanding boat-building practices in Cambodia. As a tree is a resource to be found in the forest, the first stage of boat-building happens in the realm of the biggest territorial to tonic-like spirits. The need to engage with these spirits requires the boat-builder to act as a mediator with a non-human actor, so his role cannot be reduced to craftsmanship alone. The Cambodian boat-builder is called Chiang Pre, the carpenter of the forest, and he acts both as a craftsman and an acar, a lay ritual specialist. As we will see, his role is to select the tree, request permission from the spirits to fell the tree, conduct rituals and offerings to appease the spirits, and ensure the safety of the crew by implementing proper behavior from his crew through taboos. He then needs to ensure that the boat is properly made. Making a mistake makes in the construction is very dangerous as it will invade the spirit, and even nowadays the subject is considered taboo among some boat-builders. If you're interested in the subject, I really recommend you to read Hawke's article, which I have included in the slide. The first task of the boat-builder is to select the appropriate tree. The Chiang Pre has to identify the ideal tree measuring the size of the trunk to ensure that it meets the requirements of the boat. This process takes place during the dry season because according to Khmer beliefs, the tree is like every other living creature follows the annual retreat of the rainy season and cutting them over that period is considered in auspicious. This is the same kind of process that happens in wooden architecture. The archaeological remains of two dagas in the Angkor area in 2007 and 2016, respectively, show that boats were constructed using the Hoppe Aodorata tree, which is locally known as the Koki Tree. A tradition that is documented also in the present, although due to several reasons it has become less common. This tree of immense proportions is considered sacred among the Khmer, and in architectural tradition wood is only used for the construction of monastery buildings and royal residences. So already in the selection of the material we see that the primary source material has an attributed spiritual value and its ownership lights outside of human hands. So once a tree has been identified, the boat-builder proceeds to present offerings to the spirits of the forest, the spirits of the land and the spirits of the tree. This includes a pork face and a hand of moon bananas. Then a request is made, accompanied by further offerings to ask the spirit to leave his home. Candles and incense are lit in the changpui as the changpui invokes the spirit saying, we, your servants, request this Koki Tree to make a duk, which is both in Khmer. We pray for you to agree to our request. A letter is then placed on the trunk to inform the spirits that after seven days they will return to fill the tree and to ask them to remain, but to stay away as far as possible. The tree is then in a state of soullessness while its spirit prowls around the area. The state is considered to be extremely dangerous for boat-builders who have to protect themselves by requesting the help of Priyapich Nuka, the artisan god. After the seven-day wait, the boat-builders return to the site prior to cutting down the tree, they wait for a few minutes before performing a mock attempt to fill the tree. Holding the artsy in his hand, the changpui asks, have the lords considered to give us this tree? To which the crew responds, yes, they have. The changpui addresses the spirit once more, is this true? And he is answered again by his crew. Our lords have clearly given it. This is repeated cries before starting to cut the tree. During this process, absolute silence is observed. Talking or laughing is extremely forbidden. As in, the otherworldly nature of boats lie at the very beginning of their existence with the selection of the material in such a way that it's an extricable. The belief that the tree is the dwelling of the spirit affects the way in which the material is processed and constraints boat construction and how designed to some extent. This is seen in the way dugouts are constructed in the forest where the log is hollowed out and then opened up by placing the log on top of the embers that are lit using the remains of the hollowing out process. Though it could be suggested that the recycling of material is prompted by a desire to maximize the use of resources, the attribution of the spirit to the material appears to play an important role in the way the material is handled and used. Therefore, I would suggest that by using the remnants of the boat to light the fire, the wood is transformed into smoke. And in this area for me becomes part of the boat in a process of transformation. Another important element is both building is that the Khmer do not be sauce either for both building nor to make wooden houses. This was already a cause of shock for Choda one a Chinese emissary who visited anchor in 13th century, who thought this was a waste of resources. The Khmer did not know about, did know about sauce through cultural exchanges we can assume but it's quite clear that up until the 20th century they have opted to use access and access a clear indication of how crucial traditional traditional practice is for both building. And this context chiseling may be seen as a transformative tool compared to sign. The boat further requires the quality of the living being through terminology, as the parts of the whole are identified with body parts. So the bow is called cabal which is the head. The section between the bow and the first board is called cut the throat. The first board is known as small shoulder, the walls of the boat are called such flesh, the central section of the boat is strong. I'm sorry if I'm butchering beautiful camera language. The ribs are called chain, which is the skeleton and the section between the last board and this turn is known as check that can say which is the hill. So once the dog has been evened out the log is turned over and left in the woods to drive for one or two weeks. The end production of this point is called took control the wild boat. Then the work in the forest is finished the boat builders bid farewell to the spirits of the forest leaving offerings for them. So for example to chickens in the bottom of rice wine. So the dog is dug out is then taken to the village where the boat builders involved in the events of the forest request protection and refuge to the place rock the warden spirits of the village. So the ceremony to cross the threshold of the village is similar to the one celebrated for the felling of the tree, but this time the ones conducted are the owner of the dug out and the chin stroke the carpenter of the village, who will be in charge of the work in the case of construction as cocktails as in his article, the dug out is thus passed into the world of the shock. Though it is acknowledged by the Cambodian local population that the boat has a spirit to me was not very clear in the data the moment when the spirit starts to inhabit the boat again. So there is a ceremony designed to evict the spirit before felling the felling of the tree, a similar ceremony to bind the spirit to the boat probably takes place at some point in the construction process. This is the case of the opening of the eye ceremony which is conducted in the village once the boat is finished. This process is feared by the carpenters because the eyes of the boat are the eyes of the spirit that lives inside it. Nowadays, the boat is considered to be a symbol of the nagi with female snake or Naga boat builders to great care not angering the chief carpenter or breaking things in front of the eyes. They both have to weigh the same because otherwise the boat will tilt towards one side before placing the eyes on the whole mandatory offerings are made to fish in a car. A well cooked pork face, a cooked chicken, a hand of moon bananas, five candles, five instant sticks, five cigarettes, five betel leaves, two slattor, a bottle of rice wine, sambor and golden silver leaves. After setting the offerings, the car pours water over the eyes and ties a cord around the wrist of those who have participated in the construction of the boat. In this process, he sings a song of victory named Chajanto in Khmer. When the dugout is finalized, the baptism is organized on the date of the birth of the owner. If this state is inauspicious when the wife's birthday is selected. Family and relatives partake in the event where new offerings are made. A red textile with magic formulas is tied around the section of the bow known as ka at the throat. Three instant sticks are burned in the bow and all the equipment of the dugout is placed inside the hull. Two large candles are lit. One is placed at the bow and the other one at the stir. Smaller candles are placed on the forts. When all the offerings and preparations are completed, the car besides the magic formula as follows. All powerful spirit protector of the village. Today we have organized a ceremony to request your permission to launch the talk on the water. Lord, they to grant us prosperous trade and gentle and solid fortune. To all of those gathered here today, our children, our grandchildren, husband and wife, and you took. When you were in the forest, we called you cookie, but now you're in the village and you're a book, and we name you suck children, fortune and prosperity. After reciting this incantation, the orchestra plays three songs destined to please the spirits that will protect the boat. According to a medium, who was interviewed by folk, the first student is dedicated to jump there. Who will guide the ship and act as a serious woman. The second song is to honor to their mouth, the black lady, which who is the war guardian of the spirits of the forest will act as the vigil. Finally, the third piece is for the damsel. God can't don't keep savior of the earth, whose task is to float and move the boat. When the music is over, the boat is launched and the family gets on board. They navigate around the port three times to honor and thank the spirits and with this, the process of transformation of the cookie tree into a boat is finalized. So to sum up this part, I want to emphasize once more that the other worldly nature boats lie at the very beginning of their existence with a selection of the material in such a way that it's inextricable from from it. I believe that the tree is a dwelling of the spirits affect the way in which the materials process. It constraints both construction in the way the longest process and the tools are to be used and it marks the pace and the space of the construction process through the rituals that need to be conducted to a piece of spirits, the location of the construction process, and even the season in which the activity takes place. The rituals are set in place to ensure that the spirit or the vitality of the boat is restored after the transformation process is concluded. The boat therefore contains the vitality of a living being a perception reflected in the use of body parts to refer to the boat. Unlike land where the Khmer had developed ways to transform the forest into domesticated havens, water remain and remains an untameable force of nature. The perception of water is that place of otherness and unpredictable and alien environment possessing great theory, great beauty and destructive power remains unchanged. No human power, no ritual can truly domesticate the rivers or the seas. The tree remains afloat, unsinkable against all odds. Through a transformative process that involves both the physical and the metaphysical character of the material, trees become boats to find the unruly nature of water, safely carrying humans to wherever they need to go. In the Khmer context is therefore not a matter of technology or at least not a matter of technology per se, but a process of transactional and transformative magic, where the boat builder needs to convince supernatural forces to allow him to fill the tree in return for ritual performances and transform the primary source from a wild tree inhabited by a wild spirit into a domestic boat inhabited by a domesticated spirit. This extended process where proper ritual and behavior needs to be followed to a business period that brings the boat to life. So we move on to anchor now in a bit to contextualize the use of lavishly decorated boats. It is clear from the iconography that during the height of the Angkor era, common watercraft had undergone a significant transformation from a utilitarian vessel to suomorphic creatures, distracted from Indian pantheons. How and why this process happened. What does it tell us about the Angkorian people. The ritual behavior that surrounds contemporary boat construction in Cambodia indicates that the utilitarian boats of Angkor, which the evidence suggests were made in the same way from a technological perspective, as the ones that we have nowadays in the ethnography, possess the same apatropaic and other than human agency attrition as a modern counterparts. They need to create a functional object with independent agency to bring good luck to the owner and help in the success of the journey was likely the result of the perceived dangers of navigating the mechanism of basin. However, the cooperation of the spirit came at the cost in terms of construction process material processing and ritual behavior had to be observed about the lifecycle of the boat. And as I said, this is an open ended process. It doesn't stop once the boat has been launched and sanctified. The connection of the boats as living creatures that were old respect, not only mark the way should building traditions developed but also set the tone for the modifications and uses that will be seen below in the context of social practice. The logical historical and ethnographic data discussed suggests that the utilitarian vessels of Angkor were imbued with others in human agency and that they acted as liminal apatropaic agents between nature and humans. The boats of Angkor's elite are characterized by a zoomorphic transformation through decoration. Both are no longer utilitarian objects but fantastic mythical animals with prominent heads and tails, and in some instances with bodies made of scales. There are three main types of decoration which appear independently, or in combination, the Makara, the Garuda and the Nagarberchese. Although there are no physical remains of the decorated boats of Angkor, the extensive iconographic corpus shows these decorations in my new detail. The modification of the decorations suggests the need to amplify the boat's potency by transforming the common hall into a mythological animal. So decorations need to be considered within their context of usage. The three main types of stampo decorations are the Garuda, the Nagarberchese, although these last two are difficult to tell apart in examples that I have analyzed. So Garuda is a mythological bird that represents birth and brochure in heaven. This bird-like figure is the mount of Vishnu and is invoked in the Mahabharata as a symbol of martial prowess, speed and violent force. Garuda decorations appear as emblems of the king's guards taking part in state progress by water, as vehicles for individual transport, and as a fictional space from which to observe and take part in the story of Pradyumna. So within the context of mythology. It has been noted, nonetheless, that some of the boats in the causeways of Priyakan appear to have Garuda decorations, but these are too deteriorated to strike the minimal interpretation of the context of usage beyond that they are part of a multi-vehicle event depicting people moving in or out of the Priyakan temple. Now I have to say decorations appear in a very specific multi-vehicle event that involves the exchange of offerings as individual transport and also as a stage for playing chess. The hull is not often decorated. Sometimes a head of a makara appears at the bow section. The makara is a hybrid mix of crocodile, fish, tapir, bird and elephant, and is very common in Khmer architecture. So the makara is often found in round keel boats and are used in the celebration of a festival. It politically charged multi-vehicle pilgrimage, the one that you can see in the first image. It also appears in a local ritual serrated man-made pond and for individual transport in what appears to be again another pilgrimage. When the makara has its mouth open, the keel has an edge and the boat is used for warfare. Other type of hull decorations include scales to reproduce the texture of aquatic animals. No color has been found in the reliefs, but it seems likely that the boats were painted and gilded. It is worth taking our time to contextualize the earliest depiction of the zoomorphic boat in Angkor, which appears part of the mural decorations of Angkor Wat. The carving, identified as the Dvarawati Water Festival, covers the majority of the wall and contains a single scene of two very large vessels set in a natural environment. The one in the upper section has a rat-chissé decoration with this extinct, goatee and clenched teeth. A continuous line of paddlers wearing livery and high chignons propel the boat towards the west. There are two elevated platforms filled with women and children. Male musicians play in the background, the women in the after seated, and behind them there are some trees and there are men picking up fruit. A Grand Central Pavilion is located in midships at the center of the boat, where two men are playing chess with the traditional pieces of the game in the Khmer version are visible. The vessels on the lower section has a hamsa, which is the one that you see in the slide, decorated in the bow. The paddlers are also seen wearing livery, but they are only spread at the fore and the aft of the vessel. The central section does not have paddlers because it is occupied by the platform of the central pavilion, where a couple is depicted in a large size, surrounded by three children. On the left room there are two women embracing each other, while on the right side room there is another large bearded male figure, nearly identical to the central figure, looking at a cockfight that is taking place on the aft platform, while a child embraces him from behind. Now I take time to define this so that you can get an idea of the amount of activities and people that are using these vessels, which really suggests that the vessels were very sturdy in their stability. So it is clear from this carving, the space on board the boat was divided according to rank as well, with the central section being the most important part. This is not a universal. The center of the boat is the widest, but it's not always the most important section because sometimes the water will wet the person who's at the center, so sometimes that's not considered the most important area. But in the case of Angkor, the most important people are always represented at the center of the vessel. So the pavilions here also show how great the Khmer expertise was in distributing the weight to maintain the boat stability, with most of the added weight located in the platform of the pavilions, and the roof of the pavilions probably made lighter with the use of the textiles that we take the tidal barges as an example. So this allows them to retain stability, even though they're adding quite an incremental height to the vessel. As mentioned, it hasn't suggested that they seemed to pick the Varavati water festival described in the Harivamsa, to 45 to 46. The Varavati is a city of Visnu, from where he departs on a maritime pilgrimage to a city called Pindarakka. Visnu encourages all those taking part in the nautical parade to indulge in the pleasures of life as the board magnificent vessel shaped like geese, peacocks and sea monsters, with golden pavilions decorated with gold and precious stones and crown with garlands. Music, singing, dancing and love games are enjoyed by all on board. The decorated boats involved in peaceful activities are depicted in nautical scenes of religious character, the majority of which are located in private spaces. This establishes a clear link between the modification of the barges through decoration Varavati by the religious context of usage. Political power and legitimacy in Angkor depended on the ability of the king to demonstrate his association with the divine world through ritual reenactment and the configuration of centric power that represented the divine macroposmos in the mundane world. These urban centers relied on the Hindu idea that there is a parallel between the macropos of the gods and the microcosms of the humans. And thus the power of the kings of Angkor depended on their ability to demonstrate to their subjects that they could tap into divine sources of power by creating symbolic associations that have tended to reconstruct the divine world. In this way, the outer moat, the actual towers and the main tower of Angkor are symbolic representations of Mount Mer surrounded by the ocean and the mountains. If the festival in southwest corner Pavilion of Angkor is interpreted as the Angkorian interpretation of the boats used in the mythological story, and it seems logical that in an attempt to reproduce this divine macroposm into the mundane world, the boat builders of Angkor would have copied these models for the boats of Angkor. While the agency of spirits and utilitarian vessels may have been good to exert influence on the mundane world, the transformation of boats into zoomorphic creatures from the realms of the gods suggests that these were more than apotopeic mechanisms to deal with the perils of navigating mundane waters. The transformation of boats into mythical creatures that are believed to inhabit the threshold of the divine world suggests that the elite of Angkor was seeking to colonize the metaphysical space attributed to the aquatic environment and reinforce that connection between the divine and the mundane. The correspondence between Angkorian-degraded boats and the divine creatures after which they were modeled would have transformed boats into important symbols of the elite, since the symbolic correspondence would mean that by using these boats they would become the divine counterpart of the creature depicted in the boat. This phenomenon is documented in Thailand, when the king, who is thought to be an avatar of Vishnu on earth towards the boat, the real Barsanandana Harash, boat and king are considered to be the living representation of the Vishnu and Anta Saiyan. Vishnu and Anta Saiyan is a theme from Hindu mythology where Vishnu is represented sleeping on the serpent Ananta on the cosmic ocean where all things are going to be created. Vishnu's dream between creation and the birth of Brahma, who is a creative force that will generate a new universe, are the main elements of the Vishnu and Anta Saiyan. While the role of Ananta the serpent is to be the floating bed of Vishnu, so to all affect Ananta is acting as a living boat. The round sculpture of Vishnu and Anta Saiyan that was consecrated in the island temple of the West Mekbon in the early 12th century by Suriyama on the 2nd could be construed as a precursor of this symbolic correlation, or at least it will allow us to better understand this. Current interpretations suggest that by placing the statue in the West Mekbon the waters of the West Varaya were consecrated. As you can see in the image boats had to be used to reach the West Mekbon island temple, and there are other similar temples in Angkor like the East Mekbon or Nekbon. So taking into account the symbolic nature of Angkorian culture, the presence of the Varavati water festival in Angkor Wat and the need to reach island temples and other locations by boat. It seems logical to assume that highly decorated royal barges were used by the kings of Angkor, at least since the construction of these island temples if not earlier. So by the 13th century the multi-headed Naga decoration is already in use on the king's flagship in the festival scene of the bayon that you see in the slide, which suggests that this symbolic correspondence was being used at the time, that of the multi-headed Naga as the flagship of the king. The use of multi-headed decoration to evoke the serpent Ananta and associate the user that is the king with Vishnu and transform the water where they navigate into cosmic ocean. And therefore sanctifying this water is a clear example of how this correlation may have worked. The variety of simple decorations suggests that these were linked to specific activities or specific ranks. In a highly hierarchical society like that of Angkor, where insignia were ascribed to people according to their rank, it will be surprising if the decorated barges were not regulated. Examples of this type of regulation are found in the royal barges of Thailand that you see below the Angkorian relief. During that period, the decoration of the barges were linked to the rank of the user. Those belonging to high ranking officers had a small central rebellion, while painted and gilded barges were reserved for the two chief ministers of the king. The king could give such a boat to a high ranking officer, but in that case the boat could only be used by the officer under exceptional circumstances. Having a fleet of decorated vessels for use within Angkor would have contributed to the illusion of reflecting the microcosms of the divine world and this mundane microcosms. So it would have been to the king's advantage to have their subjects traveling by these boats in official measure. The decorated boats would have therefore been also a reflection of Angkor hierarchically organized society which would then re-produce within the boat, as I mentioned before the space was highly hierarchical even inside of it. This is similar to the case of the royal barges of Thailand that I've mentioned where the king would send his royal fleet to bring foreign envoys of the Chalpaya river in the 17th century. Though I will not go too much into this, the Thai royal barges show that zoomorphic features of the boats can be emphasized and enhanced by the clever use of colors and movement. Something that was noted by European travelers in the 17th century, hence current boat would have been part of a performance that would have brought the boats to life for anyone who saw them from shorelines, adding further realism to the magnificence of the boats and their users. In Thailand, songs are sung in drums played to keep the rhythm of the paddlers adding another sensory layer to the whole experience. And if I can do this correctly now, I will show you how this would have worked. So you can hear now the songs that are chanted during the royal barges parade in Thailand. And through the use of the library and the colors that they use, the red library really emerges within the shaft of the paddles. And the blade of the paddle is painted in a different color. And so suddenly the paddlers and the boat become a single entity, and it gives the illusion of that animal that can be seen from the shore. Here you can see a clearer picture. So if we take a look at how this would have worked in Angkor, here is a drawing from the JS team of one of the nautical scenes that appears in the inner gallery of the Bayon Temple. And if you can see on the side, oh sorry, if you can see on the side, you'll see a mountain with a shrine and the pilgrims come from this side mounted on three barges. The three barges are newly identical and had Garuda and Makara decorations. There's two first boats carry Khmer people, while this third one, I think they're usually, to be their foreigners, they're usually identified with charm people. So as you can see, it would have been, this boat is so similar to this one that I would suggest that he forms part of this Angkorian fleet to carry foreign envoys to specific or very important pilgrimages. So starting from the conceptualization of the Angkorian utilitarian boat as an entity with other than human agency, and now with upper to pie qualities this presentation has discussed how preexisting nautical traditions intertwined with the selection of Indian motives to create zoomorphic barges for an elite whose power depended on displaying their connection to the divine world. While the Khmer made a conscious choice to select aspects of Indian culture that best expressed their understanding of the maritime realm, travelers who shared the same Indian influences would have felt a sense of familiarity with and understanding of the choice of iconography, using the royal barges. This overlapping of local and foreign traditions to construct new nautical realities are but an example of how intensive interactions to trade in which resulted in the development of new practices. At the same time that it supported the spread of an iconographic corpus that helped to answer the coast along the Indian Ocean. I hope I have managed to convince you that applying a maritime perspective and using interdisciplinary approaches that engage with a wide variety of sources, we can gain you or different understandings of the past. The study of Angkor is particularly suited for this as we have a wide variety of data from different fields that once put together allows us to better understand the region's river in cultural landscape. This way we can push beyond vision studies of nautical technology and begin to see a far more complex landscape where cultures tightly entangled with technology to a point that both need to be understood as part of a single cultural expression. I think that in the sense maritime archaeology has a lot to contribute to archaeology in Southeast Asia as a whole. Thank you. Thank you Veronica. Thank you so much for that extremely rich. I am looking to see whether we have any questions yet from our live feed on Facebook. I don't see any questions. If I would encourage anybody who has a question to please just type your question into the chat box. And it will be conveyed to us shortly. If there's no questions at the moment, then I might just go back to my notes and post some questions for you. So, yes, I thought it was really interesting the idea about how boat starts its life. The life cycle of a boat perhaps is there. There's definitely a moment right from the start where the boat builder engages in the forest with the spirits of the forest and with the material itself asking for permission. Take the wood to cut the wood. And there's a kind of a consecration moment when the eyes quite far into the process already the eyes are painted onto the boat and the music is played and there's a lot of requests for protection from specific spirits. Is there an ongoing kind of ritual after that that ensures the boat continues to be looked after through its life and and is there ever a moment of recycling a death of a boat and recycling of the materials or anything. Can you see a process follow through the process of it. Yes, I so unfortunately in the context of our core, we don't really have any depositions about there's two boats that have been found but the context is it's not really been published yet so I'm not really certain but they were not depositional. So that I do you picked it up well I do one of the purchase that I do when I study boats is the life cycle of the boat so who made it how it was made how it was used how it was modified and then how it ended. And I know that because of this way that the Khmer have to understand in the world, you need to constantly renew the, the saviour legions of the spirit of the boat so so. You need to perform certain kinds of rituals throughout the life of the boat. With the water festival boats, usually after they have raised on the boat, I've seen a lot of them that are taken out, and they're placed under roofs to be protected and they're there and offerings are constantly being taken. I was very interested, but I didn't manage to speak to anyone about this, but a lot of times I've seen boats that have kind of sunk. And so I was wondering whether, because they had not been recovered they were just being left there. And it I observed it several times in the landscape. I am not sure whether they were just abandoned boat or there was this sense that because the boat had sunk. This the contractual agreement that the people who were using the boat had the spirits had been void. And so it would have been unwise to recover the boat. This, for example, is completely different in Titan, where I actually have seen how the boats are decommissioned, they're placed, some ribbons are placed around it. And so there's an acknowledgement that the spirit lives there. So it may be a different perception of how the world of spirits work. And, for example, I also came across a boat in a what, and I think it was in Chonkinance that had been unfinished and then after looking at it in my pictures they saw that it was it was unaligned. So, of course, that would be taboo they they made the boat with a flaw that prevented from being finished. And so they took it there so that the monks could perform the sermons to a piece of spirit. And the boat that they found in the Angkor era, the last one that was found in 2016, that boat was not finished, and I also get the perception that the boat was not finished. And so it was, it was, what's it called, it was buried, because it was found really deep underground. So, but the fact that it was not finished is what really triggered my imagination in that sense. So I think that that to make it short. Yes, it's an open ended process, or I would understand as an open ended process where you have to perform certain rituals the same whether you would do in the village. And that if you don't do it, then you may face the wrath of spirits and you are interested in maintaining that relationship. And so you will amend the boat as much as you can, so that you don't have to throw it away because it's a living entity. Interesting. Okay, well now we have some questions here. Thank you for the answer. Here's a question from Angela Chu. She says, thanks so much for the fascinating presentation. Do you know if there's any inscriptional evidence from Angkor of the maritime culture you described such as mentions of boat building or rituals, names of boats, etc. If there is such textual evidence are Sanskritical old Khmer terms used for boats. So because I'm not trained into that kind of research, I just looked at it from the sources and just as public some colleagues, there are some reference to boats but not to how boats are being built. And this may not be very surprising. I mean, I think that the best evidence we have with these boats is the nautical ethnography, and that partly speaks for itself we do have evidence of the way that some rituals were being conducted on board boats in many different environments. So you have not only have natural environments, you also have manmade environments. So we know that in the ponds and the borough, certain rituals are being conducted. As to the particularities of the textual sources, as again, I say there are some references to boats or to crossings. I was looking at the term compound for doing the mass deconstructed to try to figure out how was that interface between the water and the land in terms of infrastructure. But there was not a lot of information beyond that this area was just as a crossing and therefore listening component. So, so, no, I think that our best bet is the iconography. It's interesting what's missing even within the iconography, maybe you think how important water is water itself doesn't seem to be correct me if I'm wrong. Water doesn't seem to be depicted in the bar reliefs. The way they depict water is what's actually in the water well for the culture lies in fish that are everywhere seems to be that fish water. I think only the anchor what really the water is well that's the only one that actually have the waves of the water. But I mean waters present a lot in the in the reliefs you can you can see it quite extensively even it's just through boats that are on seas let's call them seas of fish. And they're quite accurate pictures of fish if I'm not mistaken. So, so we know that they had found ecological knowledge that you would expect from them. Okay, so here's another question. How about the depictions of foreign or enemy boats in uncorian reliefs. Are these detailed detailed enough to show differences in foreign boat technology. Yes, actually that's a very interesting question because I did. There's a stark difference between. So, so Khmer people are not depicted on foreign ships. Foreign ships are clearly identifiable. So you have or foreigners are clear identifiable and they are always using either Khmer boats or similar to Khmer boats or they have their own technical techniques. So they have this large trading vessel that's a seagull in vessel in the bio and it's clearly a vessel. But there's, I think there's a clear connection between like so that's how they identify themselves. So there's a clear intention to identify Khmer on board this very specific kind of vessels and this is something that we find in communities because what you find usually in Martin communities is that the bow is up to your taste, the way that you want to make it so you like specific cultures they create their own perception of what a boat should look like. So it is very easy to perceive what boats belong to certain cultures and what don't so so in my work I think that although there are not that many foreign ships depicted. Foreigners are always associated either with foreign techniques or some local boats or but certainly Khmer's are always depicted on donuts. Great, here's another question. The human paddled boat were most likely to be used as a transportation along the river roads of Angkor. Do they have some sort of long distance or sailing boats or ships that we use for long distance traveling or during battle at sea. No, I'm going to say no, like the large plank vessel that we have is a foreign vessel. This does not mean that they didn't have it. So that one clearly says that the Khmer had large vessels is very likely that Khmer people living on the coast had larger vessels. If in the context of battle I see I don't know the naval battles represented in Angkor clearly like battles or river battles. It seems obvious that being a riverine and lake culture, it would have developed a kind of deep that would have worked within that environment. But the kinds of battles boats that we have are clearly for this kind of inner waters but not for the sea. Okay. Great. I'm just going to skip to another question first and come back. Such treatment of boats as a living being even with its own identity. Is it unique to modern Cambodia. If not, can you elaborate a bit about boat treatment in other cultures in the region. In Southeast Asia, there's, I think that I would say that there's a lot of different cultures that use the same kind of approach. The Viking Museum in Denmark, they actually made, like they went through the construction process of a dugout in Borneo and they bought the material and had it done in Denmark and they keep it there. The whole process was recorded and it does mention the same thing like you need to ask for permission. There's a certain degree of taboos that go around it. The trees have spirits and so on and so forth. And so you do have that sense of a living boat but I mean in general even in other cultures are very much the same as well because of the material but this happens mostly with dugouts. It doesn't happen I think as much with white vessels. So I think it's a, it's a, it's a, and maybe it's a natural way of approaching the material. So if it's a very ancient tradition and you have this, this what Chris calls in terms of magic, magical perceptions of the world where you want to impact your actions and the actions of the universe. Then you see if you see the trees as living creatures and you have to cut them off, then of course the process of transformation of that boat into, of that tree into a boat would be in a different way. And there's actually a boat, an article there but very recently about the people in the Caribbean having very similar approaches. So I would say that yes this happens in a lot of different cultures, but mostly with dugouts and not so much when you jump, you make the jump to blank vessels. Right, right. What about if you were to move further back in time in Southeast Asia and think about things like log coffin burials. Actually that's one of the things that appeared when I was doing my research because that kind of symbolic vessel if you think about, if you think about the spirit of the tree, and you think about how you have to face this kind of trips to the other world, then to have a tree coffin, a boat coffin burial would really add to that idea of a travel, a journey. And again it's not, it's common from many cultures to have boats to take you to the other world. And if you see this, if you understand this construction process and you understand that the material, that tree is the key to the success of the journey, then you understand that if you have to choose, you probably want to choose a boat rather than a cart, for example, just because of the, of the, this very ancient perception of, of the environment in the other of the world. Okay. Okay, here's something more to do with methodology, whether barriers or difficulties you faced when approaching archaeology through an interdisciplinary approach within Southeast Asian academic circles. If so, what can we do to overcome those barriers and help advance the field of anthropological studies in Southeast Asia? Well, because I'm, I do maritime archaeology and surrounded by maritime archaeologists, they really understand the approach that I take. I think that it's mostly outside of the field of maritime archaeology that people may be a little bit more reluctant. But as I mentioned, when you look at maritime communities, they tend to be quite conservative. And so there's a lot of residual practices that remain even when they've suffered very large transformations in terms of religion. So for example, when you have, you know, jumped from maybe this kind of animistic religion to a more of a organized religion like Christianity, things like that. So there's still some superstitions that are attached to use a boat and I think it has to do with the fear that the sea or the river really creates in the human mind. And so that it doesn't hurt to retain certain practices. So I think that we're very much keen on doing that kind of approach is I think that anthropology has a lot to offer. I think Southeast Asia is a very special place to do this kind of studies because of the wealth of anthropological knowledge that we have. I think it's also a key component that local archaeologists and local anthropologists can bring to the table. I mean, I have a lot of limitations. I am not like my training is in maritime archaeology, not in Southeast Asian archaeology, for example, so like I hadn't had the chance really, even though I tried to learn Khmer and the very basic level. But if you know the culture, you know the language, then you have a position of advantage and that you can bring to the table. If we do the analysis from a technological point of view, you're only going to go so far. But if you add that contextual context of culture, then you can bring things to the table that cannot be seen in the archaeological record. And then I think that's that's that's something that we should push further. And yeah, so I think that in that sense, Southeast Asia has a lot to offer compared to other areas where you may not have so much wealth of information. So from the same person, what types of research methods did you use to understand the maritime culture of Angkor? What can environmental scientists learn from this study and what impacts can they derive from understanding the historical and cultural context of Angkor to the modern geopolitical world? That's a very interesting question. Because I hadn't used a lot. So, for example, for the nautical iconography, my sister is an iconographer, so she really walked me through the whole Pinovsky theory and how to understand iconography from an art history perspective. Not in terms of style, but rather in terms of content and content. And so that that was actually quite crucial. And I added, when I mentioned environmental law, of course, traditional ecological knowledge was very important. And I, that is something that I haven't mentioned there, but that I've done for my previous postdoc, which I'm not writing up. So, for example, I've always thought about movement in terms of transport, but then I started looking at the ecology and how people move and traditional ecological knowledge has been recorded by anthropologists, and then you can see that people have been moving until quite recently with the following fish migration patterns. So you see a different kind of approach to transport and people's movement. So it's not only to transport goods from one point to another, but actually people follow in migration routes in rivers. So that can really contribute and to know, in order to know that you need to know more about this kind of ethnographic material and also environmental studies that will tell you exactly how the fish moved in the landscape. So those are the ones that are a little bit off, let's say from Maritime archaeology per se, which is more about technology and how to document both building practices and so on. Did I miss another question? No, I think that's fine. There is just one more question, actually, and then I think we should close. And that is the idea of the belief in giving boats eyes and treating them as living also exists in southern Chinese cultures. And did you find a connection between ancient Chinese influences on Khmer boatbuilding cultures? I know that there are some connections between Southern Chinese practices and Cambodian practices, just by sheer contact. I think that if the idea of whether that influenced the region or not, I wouldn't know. I think it's a little bit, it's unknowable, I don't think that you're going to find that data. Who did it first? I think it's a very natural understanding of how boats work. Like if you go to the Mediterranean, there's eyes on the boats as well. We know this since the district times. So there's certain degrees in this practice have to do with helping the spirit of the boat or help the boat find its path and avoid any obstacles, avoid sinking. So it's a very natural way of understanding boats as living entities with a particular character. But it is true that there's a lot of shared traits in not only in Southeast Asia and in southern China, but also on the other side. When I talk to people about this kind of data, this is very similar in the indigenous communities of Bangladesh and India. And so I think that it's quite a spread, this kind of reception. It's not unique to one culture or another. I suppose one source of evidence would be to look for mural paintings in Southeast Asia with depictions of Chinese boats. I think that's even too late to when this kind of, because it's done that are very early, although some people would debate whether this is the first kind of boats that you have. We know that people were using boats really way back then. So it's a pretty historic technology and they tend to be dugouts or skin boats, which are quite intuitive in terms of technology. So that this probably comes even before and sort of more painted that may happen. So I don't know how we could know when, where this practice starts. But it is also true that if something works from one trader and then the other one sees it any kind of like taps on this superstition kind of ways that you want to apply it even though it may not be your own. If you're working in this kind of really dangerous environment, you're really more prone to seeking as much help as you can. So I'm guessing that traditions may spread faster. But that's just a guess. Okay, well, it looks like we've come to the end of our questions here and just remains really for me to thank you once again Veronica for being with us this morning. Thank you for taking the time out of your really busy schedule because I know you also run a very packed seminar program yourself and on top of your teaching and everything else. So thank you very much. Again, this lecture has been recorded and it will be available on YouTube eventually I think but also on the SAP Facebook page. I'd like to just make one announcement. And that is that we're very sorry that the last webinar that we ran had ran into technical problems. And so it's been rescheduled to the 13th of January at 11 o'clock London time. And that is maritime trade and shipwrecks recent recent discoveries from Vietnam and Central Thailand, and that will be presented by Alex young and a bit of a book. And so we look forward to seeing you all again on the 13th of January. And in the meantime. Thank you very much stay safe. And have a good festive season. Bye.