Before the Stone Returns to Sand

I first met Channarith during the 2022 wet season, knee-deep in turbid water at the base of Preah Khan's east gopura. He was measuring moisture content in a sandstone block that had stood for eight centuries. The reading was not good. In the four years since I began reporting on Angkor's conservation teams, the rainfall data has moved in only one direction.

The Porous Problem

The builders of Angkor used a quartz arenite from the Kulen hills — beautiful, workable, and catastrophically porous. When water enters the stone's capillary network, it dissolves the iron-oxide binder holding each grain in place. Given enough wet seasons, the block returns to sand.

We are not fighting decay. We are negotiating with it — asking the stones for another century.