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Ceramics from Champa sites in Central Vietnam

The article starts with the agreement of the terms for calling Champa cultural periods, the names of various types of site, ceramics, material from 23 sites of Champa culture found, explored and excavated in Central Vietnam to date. From that, the author divided the ceramics into 3 main groups to study and presents the following comments: - As compared to the Sa Huynh cultural stage, the assemblage of artifacts, especially the ceramics with obvious changes in materials, manufacturing techniques as well as typology. These changes resulted from 2 main reasons: Home demand and cultural contacts; - The collection of artifacts, especially the ceramics, show certain successive traditional continuance from the earlier cultural periods; - Through the ceramic collection, it is possible to realize the ways of contacts, interaction and cultural effects in such periods as: + Period I(l"t-2nd centuries): Outstandingly, the inheritance of the Sa Huynh culture and the contact with Han (Chinese) culture. + Period 2 (2nd_4th centuries) and Period 3 (4th century onwards): The interaction of many cultural contacts creates a variety of types as compared to the previous stage. + Period between 7th-II th centuries, the city ports of Champa Kingdom played a critical role in the international marine line.

From Funan statue

Funan statues were not only imitated as Indian prototypes, but also initially creative, very diversified and lively but homogenous among areas, creating a separate type of early statues of Hinduism, Buddhism and having widespread effects in the area. The Funan art maintained the effective traces on "Pre-Angkor" statues in the first stage. The "Pre-Angkor" statues inherited Funan type and were creative as well, especially the exposure of physical male display, which was sophisticatedly and articulately carved; on the other hand, each style at least has an edge with motif and features that are exotic and extremely different, with extemely diversified art inside and very distinguished outside. Angkor/Khmer Art formed a separate art line, cumbersome, "bossy" and stiff in manner. "Pre-Angkor" art doesn't seem to have any kinship connection with Arngkor Art. They look as if they appeared from the 2 separate lines and developed into 2 distinct directions? "Pre-Angkor" doesn't seem to be "Pre-".because Angkor is not connected to "Pre-" but a separate line. Khmer Angkor statues became more and more fussy, cumbersome, and rough-hewn, that possibly show their own distinguished, exotic features, though there are some balanced, sophisticated and fine statues. Those ideas might coincide with P.Bouille-Veaux's opinions, which mean that Khmer bar-reliefs are rough-hewn, with L.de la Jonquiere's, stating that they are "boring" and P.Stern's which mean they look "fierce".

Ha Long culture in the background of Vietnamese pre-prohistory

The Ha Long culture is named as the well-known bay in the Northeastern Vietnam - the Ha Long Bay. The Dandola culture is the first term suggested by Anderson, whereas the term Ha Long is called by the later Vietnamese archaeologists. So far, 31 sites of the Ha Long culture have been discovered and studied, which are mainly located on sand dunes, isthmuses on the islands, along the coast and in some caves in the Northeast coastal area of Vietnam. The author has tabulated and mapped the distributions of the Ha Long cultural sites. The dominant stone tools of the Ha Long culture are shouldered or quadrilateral axes/adzes, and small-sized stepped, shouldered wholly-ground adzes, with pebble pestles and anvils, quartz grinding stones with U-shaped groove lying across. Apart from thin, hard ceramics, there are bisque ceramics with applied designs, marked lines in combination with perforated designs, forming a peculiar physiography of this culture. The shouldered, stepped adzes, bisque ceramics and grooved gringding stones are typical artifacts of the Ha Long culture and at the same time add some new characteristics to the Ha Long culture. The Ha Long culture evoluted from the Cai Beo culture. However, it has contacts and exchanges with other cultures on the continent such as Phung Nguyen, Ha Giang, Mai Pha and off-shore islands along the south Chinese coast. The Ha Long culture is dated back to 4,000 - 3,500BP, belonging to the conception of Late Neolithic - early Bronze Age with 2 development periods. The Ha Long inhabitants reached the top-level techniques of grinding, sawing, drilling, polishing stones, and drammatically developed pottery making, they also knew how to grow fibric trees, twist threads for knitting nets, make fishing lines as well as build rafts for travelling on the sea. It might be possible that the Ha Long inhabitants were merchants involving in the trade on sea.

Hue archaeology: Half a century achievements

Since 1999, the Museum of Vietnamese History in Ha Noi in cooperation with the Centre for Reconstruction of Hue ancient City investigated, surveyed and excavated a lot of sites in Royal Palace area and Hue citadel. The results of the excavations at Palaces of Dien Tho, Duyet Thin Duong, Ho Tinh Tam, Truong Sanh, Sac Khuyet Lau - Tu Phuong Vo Su, Thieu Phuong Garden, the system of Truong lobby in Forbidden citadel area, An Dinh Palace, Gia Long Tomb, Minh Mang Tomb... are great, providing a lot of data for scientific studies and practical activities: - Providing a lot of important information for effective services of reconstruction and restoration of the site area; - Providing the data of technique for foundation consolidation of various constructions from many different periods existing for 150 years this site area; - Providing a collection of archaeological artifacts which have values to study the cultural life and make it possible to speculate the dates of the sites as well. However, there are also a lot of problems for both excavated sites and unexcavated sites: - How to preserve and maintain the excavated sites and artifacts; - The need to continue archaeological investigations, test diggings and excavations of the "pre-Hue" sites in order to study the process of settlement and living activities of the kings/lords, the officials and dwellers in Hue, prior to the time when Hue became the capital of the Nguyen Dynasty.

The archaeological site of Bau Tram (Nui Thanh, Quang Nam)

Bau Tram site area at Ly Tra hamlet, Tam An commune, Nui Thanh district (Quang Nam) includes a range of sand downs linking each other along the left bank of Ba Bau River such as: Ba Tham and Dong Su... Up to now, the site area Bau Tram has been investigated and excavated twice, with a lot of found artifacts and sites that embody the characteristics and various development stages of this site area. Bau Tram is both settlement and cemetery site. The settlement layer of the early stage, Bau Tram I, is equivalent to Binh Chau and the cemetery layer of the late stage, Bau Tram II, is equivalent to such sites as Phu Hoa, Binh Yen, Thach Bich, Go Ma voi, Tam My... A lot of researchers accept the development stages of the Sa Huynh culture: Long Thach-Binh Chau-Phu Hoa-Sa Huynh. With the current data, especially those from the 2003 excavation at Bau Tram site area, the authors suppose that 2 Long Thach-Binh Chau period stages might not be the two successive periods, but they might be 2 cultural lines, developing independently(?). And normally, the sites with early dates are used to be classified to the pre-Sa Huynh period, whereas the Sa Huynh culture completely belongs to the iron item conception. The writers choose this conception: Prehistorical sites of the Metal Age centre in the central Vietnam with such development steps as: Long Thach-Binh Chau-Phu Hoa-Tam My. In Quang Nam particularly, it is probable to set up 3 Sa Huynh cultural stages: Bau Tram-Phu Hoa-Tam My. There are many different opinions about the source of the Sa Huynh culture. According to the authors, there is possibly a cultural flowing line with jar burial characteristics from the North Tay Nguyen to the central coastal plain, forming a stable cultural foundation as a base for the cultural complex of the Metal Age centre in the central Vietnam. That is a base for archaeologists to realize every type of the Sa Huynh culture in Quang Nam province.