For example, Koh Ker, where I am doing my research, has suffered from increased looting. Looters have removed sculptures and statues from the temples in order to sell them.
Looting also affects the ability to discover sites that pre-date major temples. When someone digs a hole in the ground looking for “treasure,” they completely destroy the context of those items before they can be properly recorded, resulting in the loss of any information we could have known about that history.
Looting isn’t the only activity that does this, however. Unplanned development is also a factor that has destroyed archaeological sites. This is when someone decides to clear out land to build a building or structure without first making sure that there are no significant archaeological sites on the land. The United States, for example, has cultural resource management laws that enforce this practice. If a company wants to build a building on an empty piece of land, they first have to send archaeologists to the site before they do any sort of clearing and continue to have an archaeologist on-site throughout the entire building process in case cultural material, such as indigenous (native American) burial grounds, are found. There are many instances worldwide where practices like these are not enforced, and history is lost to urban development before it can be analyzed.
International teams have come together in Cambodia to work to preserve the country's cultural heritage. The team I am working with, for example, has people from Cambodia, Australia, Brazil, France, Canada and the United States working together.
