Comparative Spatial Analysis Reveals Important Structural Similarities Between Ancient Angkor and Late Anglo-Saxon Hampshire

Abstract

Angkor (800–1435 CE) is considered the type site for “low-density agrarian urbanism”, a loosely defined archaeological label used to describe settlements with urban traits but dispersed spatial structure. Angkor’s abandonment from the fifteenth century has fueled concerns that low-density cities, now common globally, may be inherently unstable. The spatial distinctiveness of Angkor relative to other premodern rural–urban systems, however, has never been quantitatively tested. Using ChronoCluster, a Python package for novel spatiotemporal archaeological analysis, we compared Angkor’s spatial structure to that of Anglo-Saxon Hampshire as recorded in the Domesday survey (mid-eleventh century CE), a rural–urban system not described as low-density agrarian urbanism. Surprisingly, both cases showed similar multiscale spatial clustering. Despite their different appearances, they may reflect scaled variants of the same underlying urban–rural dynamics. This targeted comparison between the “low-density” type site and a non-low-density comparator challenges the idea that low-density cities like Angkor form a distinct type, raises questions about what drives variation in urban form across time and space, and opens new questions about the impact of spatial structure on urban sustainability.