ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the multiplicity in the valuation of cultural property from religious to aesthetic, historical to economic, and from ethnic, national and regional to global. It illustrates an overview of the major heritage sites in Cambodia, the kinds of cultural heritage there and give an outline of the plunder, which followed by a study of the range and types of destruction and pillage of cultural property in selected sites in Cambodia and their consequences. The destruction and looting of antiquities also continued during and after the Pol Pot period carried out by the Khmer Rouge. Some people in the local communities of heritage sites have had opportunities to become willing partners of illicit excavations, despite their traditional moral codes based on the spirit cult and Buddhism. In addition, a group of mostly young local villagers established Banteay Chhmar Community-Based Tourism (CBT) in 2007, with the aid of a French NGO, Agir Pour le Cambodge.
