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One-Pillar Pagoda (Chua Mot
Cot) in Hanoi, North Vietnam
The Noon Gate (Ngo Mon) in
Hue, Central Vietnam
Saigon by Night, Saigon,
South Vietnam
The Bronze Age
Towards the end of the second millenary B.C., copper and especially bronze made their appearance. Vietnamese soil contains many deposits of copper, tin, lead and zinc, and bronze industry underwent remarkable development. Western archaeologists whose excavations were followed by veritable plunder have given the civilization in Vietnam the name of DONG SON civilization, the first important site having been discovered in Dong son, Thanh hoa province. In fact, Dong son represents an advanced stage of the Bronze Age, and many sites have been discovered in recent years all over the territory of Vietnam, with large quantities of artifacts; all told, about thirty sites with tens of thousands of artifacts.
The first copper, then bronze objects appeared beside polished stone implements and earthenware with a still Neolithic character. Sandstone moulds for manufacturing axes, spears, and knives have been found in many places. The quality of the bronze and the shapes improved little by little, eventually ending up with the remarkable creations of Dong son. This evolution took many centuries. While it was marked by external elements, these were not decisive, as claimed by Western archaeologists.
On the strength of insufficient information, and inspired by more or less pronounced racist and colonialist feelings, some Western archaeologists have even put forward the theory that the bronze art of Viet nam had come from... Europe.
Recent discoveries have revealed three important facts:
The most remarkable objects are, incontestably the bronze drums. They have been found in many places in Southeast Asia and China, but it is generally recognized that the finest had been discovered in Viet nam. The one found in Ngoc lu is 63 centimetres high, 79 centimetres in diameter, and of cylindrical shape. In the middle of the upper face is an image of the sun with radiating beams, and sixteen concentric rings with the most various decorations: geometrical patterns, flocks of deer and aquatic birds, human figures, some playing musical instruments, others pounding rice, others beating drums. The men are clad in garments made of feathers of aquatic birds, which give them an aspect of bird-men with probably a totemic significance. They dance to the tune of clappers. There are also small buildings and houses on stilts and, on a circular swelling below the head, boats and warriors carrying axes, javelins and arrows.
Those drawings and decorations present a double character realistic and stylized which testifies to the high artistic level of their authors. Most bronze artifacts are also well ornamented or finely shaped. The bronze drums were used during important festivals and ceremonies, especially invocations for rain.
Bronze ploughshares, scythe and sickle blades, drawings on implements representing rice plants or people pounding rice all testify to the development of agriculture. While cultivation on burnt-out forest clearings continued, irrigated rice-growing also developed. River and sea fishing was widely practised. Handicrafts, pottery making and bronze casting, having reached a high level, began to be separated from agriculture. On pottery vessels, traces of plaited bamboo strips can be seen: basket-making must have known a brilliant development.
Drawings on the bronze drums represent big houses on stilts and big junks, some with towers, an evidence of great progress in wood-working.
Overseas exchanges, especially with certain regions in Southern China and Indonesia, are proved by the discovery in tombs of various objects and weapons of the Warring Kingdoms periods (5th-3rd centuries B.C. in China) while bronze drums of Dong son manufacture were sold in far-away lands.
In short, by the end of the first millenary B.C., over vast areas of
Vietnamese land, a high level of material and artistic civilization had
been reached.
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