ANGKOR and I
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99 swiftly deal with large amounts of rainwater during the wet season. In the 1960s when I was conducting a field survey, I noticed a villager whose occupation was to collect this river sand. On enquiring of the villager, I learned that from December to March, when the rainy season had concluded and the water level of the river had dropped, he would enter the river, collect the sand, and sell it to builders. He declared that it was a great source of revenue during the dry season. The Corbel Arch and Stone Masonry Technology What count are not merely the diverse sculptures and patterns that adorn the architecture of the Angkor group of monuments. Even the geometrically austere array of structural concepts, as well as the layout of the temple and shrine itself, were decided after hundreds of years had elapsed. Traditional architectural techniques that were nurtured over the course of numerous years, are responsible for the unobtrusive creation of this type of architecture. During the 10th to 11th century, Angkor architecture, which until then had used wooden frame roofs, replaced them with roofs of brick and stone. The new technique that made this possible was the pseudo arch method referred to as “Corbel Arch,” and this is to form a roof by pushing out each stone by degrees and stacking them. The downside to this corbel arch lies in the fact that seeking to widen the internal span increases the number of stones piled up, and necessitates a proportional height. Even at the height of the Angkor Wat Central Tower, the space within can only be secured at a maximum of about 3 meters [Yoshiaki Ishizawa, editor, “Arahi Hisao Memorial Academic Papers,” (private edition), 2008]. Despite the fact of their being saddled with such structural and fatal flaws, the architects of the time ceaselessly strove to surpass the limits of technology, and erect numerous temples. From the end of the 12th to the start of the 13th century, in edifices

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