NEW CONTENTS TO COME SOON!

It has been almost ten days since my last update, and I have been travelling through Cambodia moving from Siem Reap toward the south, where I ended in the town of Kep, Kampot province. Kep is a colonial retreat founded in 1908 for the French elite. The Khmer Rouge left us only skeletal remains of what was once a little paradise for those western foreigners who dreamed about uncontaminated exotic shores. Nowadays, the walls of the luxury French maisons, when covered by wood ceilings, host Khmer families of fisherman which grill crabs and squids for the few tourists excaping the beach parties of Sihanoukville.

During the last week, before taking the rusted bus to the south, I had the chance of organizing three different field trips aimed at enriching the bag of samples we already collected with APSARA. Unfortunatey, not all of them could be considered fully successful. I will not mention here the visit to the quarry I couldn’t find a few miles north of the remote temple of Preah Khan. Our motorcycle  stopped one hour far away from the phnom I was looking for, and which is supposed to hide a quarry of graywacke on one of its flanks.

Conversely, the second visit to Koh Ker site was unexpectatedly very successful. When we left the site the week before we knew that other quarries were hiding in the site area, as the testimony of the locals reaffirmed. This time we focused on two new sites which could potentially be ancient sandstone quarries, a small river located few hundered meters before the main check point and the file of Veal Thom, literally Vast Field, where the local chief of police once saw stone blocks and cutting marks.

Well, at the end of the morning these two sites turned out not to be the source of any stone building or sculpting material. The first site is in fact a beautiful outcrop of columnar basalt, forming a natural step-like structure which becomes an attractive waterfall during the rainy season. Veal Thom is actually a vast, open field now intensively cultivated, but without any remain of stone.

Our guide, after one hour of walking under a deadly sun, told us that some workers found chieseled stones during the excavation of the fields a few years ago. If a quarry exists, it is now safely protected by a patchwork of rice fields.

On our way back to the jeep we passed by an abandoned wood house where a small sandstone block was lying on the ground and used as a step. We all laughed as that was the only stone we saw that day, and we pointed the found to the local guide. That is what you are looking for? he seemed to say. And to our driver: I know some rivers where there is plenty of that stuff.

That is how we ended to walk on a new quarry, set in a small seasonal creek spotted with remains of blocks and piles of stone chips testifying the ancient chieseling activity. The river is right behind the series of shrines built around massive stone outcrops carved in the shape of linga.

Before leaving Koh Ker with seven kilograms of stones from four different quarry sites, our guide mentioned another big quarry to the west near Prasat Thom. Much more has to be done in Koh Ker, as potential quarries are certainly scattered throughout the entire site. Just beneath the area of Koh Ker there is a vast sandstone terrace which is brought to light in correspondence of riverbed and surface cuts.

Today I am back to Phnom Penh, where I am going to arrange the shipment of the samples taken from the National Museum and meet geologists from the Department of Geology of the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy. It was quite difficult to arrange the meeting, as their calendar is very busy, mostly because of the big effort put by the government in the exploitation of  Cambodian  natural resources – i.e. oil, and in this case Geology can help a lot…

Meeting them last week, before the field trips,  would be very useful. Tomorrow there will be the chance of getting new information (and hopefully geological maps!) which I will use for the field trip to Koh Ker I planned for the next week.

We already visited Koh Ker, and enjoyed the peaceful site still ignored by most of the tourists visiting Cambodia. You have to drive a long dirt road to reach the archaeological area, which is rich in tenths of prasat and shrines, all protecting the main mountain temple of Prasat Thom.

But even more interesting for the purpose of our visit, is the presence of various, and not yet studied quarries which are supposed to have provided stone material for one of the most artistically productive period of the Khmer empire. King Jayavarman IV founded the new capital at Koh Ker around 920 A.D., and he clarified his power and control through this monumental construction and the grandeur of the numerous sculptures hosted in it. And it is still clear the moment you step into the perimeter of Prasat Thom, walking on fallen stone monoliths 8 meters long  or bumping on large fragments of bulls and lion lying among the enclosures.

The quarries here are less studied than those in Beng Mealea, probably because of the very recent clearance of surrounding fields from landmines, and because of the great attention given to the Angkor park and, as a consequence, to  Phnom Kulen.

The first quarry we visited is very discrete, with only few outcrops visible from the street. You don’t think it’s a quarry, unless you keep going towards the loud music coming from the jungle. Once you are very close to the loud hut, the residence of some guardians of the site which love Khmer pop, you realize you are walking on top of a huge carved sandstone terrace. Pits are all over and sharp are the remains of chisel marks. More impressive is the fact that most of the quarry surfaces have been carved with hundreds  of Shiva, Nandin (the sacred bull mounted by Shiva), Vishnu, Brahma, Ganesha, and Buddha and even animal totems, all rising from the sediment which covers the bottom of the quarry.

The second quarry was much more adventurous to find, as it is hidden in the jungle and set in a riverbed, about 10Km north of  Koh Ker. In this case I had very few information, actually only a citation by a Japanese group that mention some findings of big stone blocks years ago. Two locals joined on the Pajero to guide us. After thirty minutes of off road driving into the jungle, we had to continue our mission by foot as the driver was pretty worried about his beloved car, scratched by tree branches and knocked by the road. After forty minutes of walk,  I was really doubting of the success of the field trip. But the more we were sinking in the vegetation, the more these guys were getting excited and smiling. We finally bumped on a wide bend of a river with its bed set in sandstone with curiously geometric groove patterns. Ok, that’s it, they look natural fractures, I thought. But the guys kept running, saying that something interesting was to come.

And was true. A couple of hundred meters and we arrive in a vast terrace full of pits and huge stone blocks. Some cuts were 10 meters long, and I could recognize the size of the pillars I saw in the temple.

I had the time to slipper on a mouldy surface and taste the hardness of the stone before starting walking through the site and take pictures.

Finally, after four full-days of intense field work, I can report on the unique experience in the Siem Reap province.

To be honest, I doubt I can sharply report how exciting and breathtaking the experience was. I am probably going to give a pale idea of what does it mean to walk into a chaotic jungle, be shaken on a jeep or on the back of a motorcycle for hours, and suddenly bump for the first time into remains of a massive work done a thousand year ago by local stone cutters.

Unfortunately,  I can not publish without previous permission the pictures of the chiseled stone walls close to Koh Ker, or the unfinished sculpture of a standing Buddha we found just lying in a quarry near Beng Mealea, where fields have been only recently cleared by landmines.

You should accidentally step by my desk in New York, and accidentally look at the screen of the computer the day I will be organizing the pictures taken during my trip to Cambodia.

Last Saturday the black Pajero, fully dress with protective skirts, was waiting for us in the parking lot near the hotel at 8am. It drove us to four different sites, all located few kilometers West of Beng Mealea. Though only 40 Km far from the main site of Angkor, Beng Mealea is still visited by few tourists and the village life in this area is a perfect copy of the detail reliefs of the Bayon.

You could see big piles of rice husk being carried by wooden cart pulled by tired buffalos, communal hearten ovens  and milling moles in full work, naked kids holding puppies running away at your sight, and every kind of  activity you have photographed the day before, carved in stone 800 years ago. The small settlement on top of the Phnom Bay, three thatched huts overlooking the Kulen mountain, houses few monks which live in hermitage. The life there is even more basic, and the small pit quarries dig in the vast naked sandstone plateau turn here into natural altars.

If you take the small dirt path on the left of one of these villages, after a long while you could start seeing big, flat sandstone blocks emerging from the low grass. Few minutes more, and you arrive in front of huge stone  steps, all showing clear chisel marks. There are many of them, usually describing a semicircle, or defying a clear pit.

One of the most famous quarry is set in the riverbed of the O’Thma Dap.  This site does not require any adventurous trip, but the view from the low bridge which cross it is really spectacular. The riverbed, geometrically grooved into regular squares, resembles one of the courtyards of Angkor Wat, with the addition here that you can swim and cool down in it after a hot day in the field.

Time is running, I have to go now and leave to the next update the rest of the story. More stones have to come from Koh Ker and Preah Khan…

It is 7:30 pm, and the first day of work in Siem Reap is going to end.

This little town faces the heavy charge of having one of the most visited monument in the world few kilometers far away.
If on the one hand this represent a great chance for the country and for the people which gravitate around it, on the other can easily become a dangerous guest to deal with.
In one year, several cardboard-like luxury hotels have been assembled, and many have their foundations already in place. They stand like pineapples among a display of prunes.

Korean, Thai and Chinese investors strongly believe in the Angkor tourism explosion, which is expected to concentrate 3 million of people in the site area for the next year.

Talking about the project, today we spent all the day at the APSARA Authority headquarter, where we have been welcomed by a kind delegation and where we discussed the terms of our cooperation in the project.

APSARA is being very helpful, providing us with the help of  local and experienced archaeologists which knows the territory and their triky dirt roads.

Once we will get the required permissions, we could jump on the 4WD which is already waiting for us in the parking of the APSARA building.

Once I will find a computer with a working cd-dvd, I’ll try to publish some pictures!

See you the next update!

Finally, I am able to update the page  with some details of the activity here in Cambodia. The chaotic life of Indochina definitely captured me, and I have been lost among the street of the city in desperate research of a tuk tuk to reach the closest internet cafe.

The first part of the field trip has been spent in Phnom Penh, at the National Museum of Cambodia. The museum displays an impressive collection of artifacts organized in open rooms that branch off from a large open courtyard.  Metal, wood, ceramic and stone artworks cover the vast Khmer production since the early prehistoric settlements.  The art usually come in pieces from excavations or carried by those who decide to bring to a safe place their lucky founds.

Thanks to the important and still essential work of support and training promoted by different foreign institution in the last decade, the museum can finally take care of this National treasure in a self-sufficient way.  The museum features a  Stone Conservation Laboratory with seven employees, under the direction of the Conservator Bertrand Porte, and the recently opened Metal Conservation Laboratory.  This lab has been established in March 2006 with the support of the Getty Foundation, and the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sakler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

A new Ceramic Conservation Laboratory recently settled in new rooms built on purpose next to the back of the museum with the contribution of the Friends of  Khmer Art of New York.

The meeting with Hab Touch, director of the National Museum, set the bases of our cooperation in Phnom Penh. In the storage we were able to look closely to  finely carved pre-Angkorian and Angkorian lintels, standing Shiva, weathered head fragments of deities and massive Jayavarman VII busts laying in the darkness of the room located in the right wing of the museum.

Our interest focused mainly on Angkorian production, which is represented here by important well-provenanced pieces from the Angkor complex and from Koh Ker.

Dusty but happy, we left the museum with twenty six fragments of stone, as a result of the integration of  new samples to fragments already existing in storage.

Today is our last day in Phnom Penh, as in two hours we are flying to Siem Reap to meet APSARA staff and organize the expeditions to Angkorian quarries.

News about jungle life are soon coming.

Schematic map of Northwestern Cambodia with survey areas

The field work in Cambodia will start January 10, 2009.