This paper describes the identifying role ritual architecture plays in the construction of settlement landscapes in northern mainland Southeast Asia. Integrating ethnographic and art historical data, it develops a framework for understanding lak ban and lak muang in terms of their socio-historical development, spatical organization, ritual observances, designs, and meaning. 

Landscape cannot 
be fully understood 
without reference 
to a worldview which 
integrates place 
and space in the 
production of meaning. 
(Snead & Preucel 1999,170)