Sarah Klassen

Background

About Sarah Klassen

I am the co-director of the Cambodian Archaeological Lidar Initiative (CALI) and director of the Koh Ker Archaeological Project (KKAP). In recent years, imagery from two lidar acquisitions were used to map seven previously concealed and undocumented dense urban landscapes surrounded by much lower density peripheries in medieval Cambodia (9th – 14th centuries CE). The revelation of these urban areas suggests that a complex web of agricultural and occupation spaces linking more densely inhabited urban nuclei may have been a ubiquitous, defining feature of Khmer landscapes. My research contributes to interdisciplinary dialogues of urbanism, resilience, and water management by providing empirical evidence of the resilience of these cities over the long-term. This work has been funded by the National Science Foundation (United States), the European Research Council (ERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Australian Department of Education and Training. Contact me for cultural resource management and remote sensing consulting services.