Angkor Park, spread over an area of 40,100 hectares, happily coexists with local settlements (112 villages scattered within the boundaries of the registered site and dating from before the inscription of the site as a World Heritage element in 1994) and a sizeable settlement outside—the town of Siem Reap, a mainly recent development south of Angkor. Siem Reap is the provincial capital with an international airport, over a hundred hotels and guesthouses, innumerable restaurants and cafes, and markets and shops, and this is to say nothing of administrative buildings.

Angkor in Cambodia is a World Heritage Site (inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1992) renowned for its archaeological and architectural significance. It contains artistic masterpieces of Khmer sculpture and design and is known for its regional influence of Khmer art. The tangible heritage aspects of Angkor have received global recognition and have been the focus of remarkable international conservation and restoration efforts in recent decades. Angkor, however, is also the site of lesser-known, yet unique, forms of intangible heritage, many of which have links to the Angkorian and pre-Angkorian periods. Over the past four years I have researched the intangible heritage of Angkor and potential mechanisms for its safeguarding. Many of the forms of intangible cultural heritage researched are intricately associated with the daily activities of people who live around the monuments of Angkor. These activities are related to the belief system of local Khmer and are often deeply intermingled with Buddhist and animistic values as well as familial and agricultural knowledge.