Âu Lạc

The local organization of society and politics apparently remained fundamentally unchanged compared to Văn Lang.[40] It was a relatively primitive form of a sovereign state with no definitive political institutions. Control over the land and the exercise of power were highly decentralized.[47] The state did not have a written law, and the social relations were regulated by customary law.

According to Joseph Buttinger, in such a society, the principal human relationship is one of vassalage, or dependence of the lower groups on the next higher of smaller size, reaching through several stages from the great numbers at the base to the head of the feudal order, the King. Dependence is rooted in the power of the higher ranks to dispose of the available land, a power always formalized as right, with a claim to some supernatural sanction. Among the early Vietnamese, all land, although it belongs theoretically to the people, was in the trust of the King.[48]

Similar to Văn Lang, the country was headed by the King, who was assisted by advisors called the Lạc hầu.[7] The country was composed of various regions, each ruled by a Lạc tướng.[7] They then subdivided their domains among the lower nobility, whose members were the chiefs of villages or of groups of villages. Their charges and privileges, like those of the higher nobles, were hereditary; they were the civil, military, and religious authority in one. As such, they administered justice, led in war, presided over local festivals and religious ceremonies.[48]

K. W. Taylor conjectured that much of the lowland population spoke what linguists call Proto-Viet-Muong related to the Mon-Khmer language family that apparently expanded northward from the Cả River delta in modern Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh Provinces. The geographical connection with other Mon-Khmer languages appears to have been via the Mụ Giạ Pass from the middle Mekong Delta to the Cả River delta. Another plausible conjecture is that the aristocracy that ruled these people, called Lạc in Han texts, came from the mountains north and west of the Red River Delta and spoke an ancient language related to modern Khmu, another Mon-Khmer language now spoken in the mountains of northern Vietnam and Laos. On the other hand, the Âu conquerers who arrived from the northern mountains with King An Duong might be imagined to have spoken a language related to the Tai-Kadai language family that includes modern Lao and Thai.[49]

Ferlus (2009) showed that the inventions of pestle, oar and a pan to cook sticky rice, which is the main characteristic of the Đông Sơn culture, correspond to the creation of new lexicons for these inventions in Northern Vietic (Việt–Mường) and Central Vietic (Cuoi-Toum). The new vocabularies of these inventions were proven to be derivatives from original verbs rather than borrowed lexical items. The current distribution of Northern Vietic also correspond to the area of Đông Sơn culture. Thus, Ferlus concludes that the Northern Vietic (Việt–Mường) speakers are the "most direct heirs" of the Dongsonians, who have resided in Southern part of Red river delta and North Central Vietnam since the 1st millennium BCE.[50]

In the highlands, people practiced slash-and-burn agriculture while in the plains, where water was abundant, irrigation systems were developed. They knew an early technique of irrigation: the use of the ocean tides that affected the water levels far into the flat delta.[51][52]

The Vietnamese continued to raise fowl, oxen, buffalo, pigs, dogs, turtles, and frogs. The presence of bronze hooks and baked clay sinkers prove the existence of line fishing. Boats with rudders were carved out of forest trees. They were capable of carrying dozens of passengers. Kilns and potting wheels were used to produce large quantities of jewelry, pans, plates, and pots, some of which were painted. They were generally mass produced, with some specialization and division of labor. Agriculture produced enough of a surplus to feed the labor forces who transferred from the rice fields to the industrial shops. Bartering developed as a result of high productivity.[53]

Lạc lords were hereditary aristocrats in something like a feudal system. The status of Lạc lords passed through the family line of one’s mother and tribute was obtained from communities of agriculturalists who practiced group responsibility. In Lạc society, access to land was based on communal usage rather than individual ownership and women possessed inheritance rights. While in Chinese society men inherited wealth through their fathers, in Lạc society both men and women inherited wealth through their mothers.[54]

According to Linh Nam chich quai, the Duke of Zhou said to the envoys, “Why do you people from Jiaozhi have short hair, tattoo your bodies, and go bareheaded and barefooted?” The author of Linh Nam chich quai expressed cultural pride through the mouths of envoys to the Zhou court: “Short hair is for convenience when traveling through the mountains and forests. We tattoo our bodies to look like dragons, so when we travel through the water the flood dragon will not dare to attack us. We go barefoot for convenience when climbing trees. We engage in slash and burn agriculture [and leave our heads bare] to beat the heat. We chew betel to get rid of filth, and therefore our teeth become black.”[55]

Ancient Han Chinese had described the people of Âu Lạc as barbaric,[56] comparing their language to animal shrieking and had regarded them as lacking morals and modesty. However, according to Olivia Milburn, the egalitarian nature of their society, along with the comparatively high status of women, the practice of getting married without a matchmaker and indeed consulting the wishes of the couple concerned, all now seem enlightened rather than barbaric.[57]

A Chinese text dating from the 220s BCE reporting "unorthodox customs" of the Yue in a part of the Lạc Việt region states:“To crop the hair, decorate the body, rub pigment into arms and fasten garments on the left side is the way of the Bakviet. In the country of Tai-wu (Vietnamese: Tây Vu) the habit is to blacken teeth, scar cheeks and wear caps of sheat [catfish] skin stitched crudely with an awl.”[58]

According to Hou Hanshu, the whole territory of the Âu Lạc people is covered with dense forests, ponds and lakes. There are a lot of wild animals like elephants, rhinoceros and tigers. The natives earn their living by hunting and fishing. They eat the meat of boa constrictors, snakes and wild animals which they kill with bows propelling bone-headed arrows....In fighting, they use bows propelling poisoned arrows. The process of making poison for arrows is a secret which they swear never to disclose to anyone. They know how to cast copper implements and pointed arrowheads. The natives tattoo themselves, wear chignon and turbans. They chew betel nuts and blacken their teeth.[59]

Chinese writers noted the Yue preoccupation with aquatic life. One text, the Huainanzi, stated in 135 BCE that in Nanyue, which then included the Red River Delta, “people carry out few occupations on land and many on water.” The inhabitants even cut their hair and “tattoo their bodies in order to resemble the scaly-skinned aquatic animals.”[60]

Lạc Việt people organized themselves along less strict, nonnuclear lines, giving authority to women as well as men. They formed matrilocal clans: couples after marriage would often go to live with the wife’s family. This matrilocal custom kept sisters together and gave married women key roles in social communication, and some were regarded as at least the equals of men. [61] Unmarried couples often lived together. This relatively open family structure contrasted with most of Chinese society, which was based increasingly though not solely on Confucian notions of the patriarchal family, in particular “filial piety,” which also provided a model for imperial government.[62] In addition, they also practiced levirate.[63][64] This meant that childless widows had a right to bear children with men from their deceased husbands’ families in order to obtain heirs. This practice ostensibly provided an heir for the mother, although some patriarchal societies used it to provide an heir for the deceased father.[54] If the levirate was an innovation designed to keep land holdings in the same male family, it also reflected an earlier tradition of female authority and protection of widows’ interests.[63] Linguistic vestiges of female status corroborate this view. Huỳnh Sanh Thông identified no fewer than thirty-two Vietnamese words for “mother” or “woman,” including seven archaic and twelve modern terms for “mother.” These also carry important other meanings, involving fertility, water, agriculture, and bronze drums. The words for water (nác/nước) and “country” (nước) derive from one of the archaic Vietnamese terms for woman (nàng), while another, nương, is also used to describe an upland field or swidden. Of two Vietnamese words for “witch, female medium,” one (bóng) also means a type of drum. The other (đồng), a homonym for both “bronze” and “a field in the country,” combines with an archaic term for “mother” (áng) to form đồng áng (“ricefields; the countryside”). All this suggests a possible Earth Mother cult and rituals associating water and fertility with bronze drums and female shamans.[65]

Women also remained prominent in indigenous religious rites, including water rituals. Local worship of the Chư vị, or Spirits of the Three Worlds—Heaven, Earth, and Water—was still popular. Most of the priests or spirit mediums involved in this were women.[66]

Map of Cổ Loa

The site consists of two outer sets of ramparts and a citadel on the inside, of rectangular shape. The moats consist of a series of streams, including the Hoang Giang River and a network of lakes that provided Cổ Loa with protection and navigation.[21]

The outer rampart comprises a perimeter of 8 km and is lined with guard towers. The ramparts still stand up to 12 m high and are 25 m in width at their base. Besides, part of the inner rampart was cut through for the purpose of archaeological investigation, which was dated from 400-350 BCE. And it was suggested that this rampart was constructed by a local and indigenous society prior to the colonization of Han dynasty.[67] The stamped earth technique or hang-tu method associated with ancient China may have been used in Cổ Loa, but studies of the defensive works are still in a preliminary stage. Also, archaeologists have estimated that over two million cubic metres of material were moved in order to construct the entire fortress, including moats that were fed by the Hoang River.[21]

Then in 2007 - 2008 another excavation took place that excavated the middle wall of Cổ Loa citadel. The excavation cut through the entire width of the rampart. The stratification showed multiple layers of construction deposits: three periods and five major phases of construction.[67]

Excavations made by archaeologists have revealed Dong Son style pottery that had stratified over time under the walls, while a drum was found by chance by Nguyen Giang Hai and Nguyen Van Hung. The drum included a hoard of bronze objects. The rarity of such objects in Southeast Asia and the range found at Co Loa is believed to possibly be unique.[21] The drum itself is one of the largest Bronze Age drums to have been recovered from the Red River Delta, standing 57 cm high and boasting a tympanum with a diameter of 73.6 cm. The drum itself weighs 72 kg and contains around 200 pieces of bronze, including 20 kg of scrap pieces from a range of artefacts. These include socketed hoes and ploughshares, socketed axes, and spearheads.[21]

The artifacts are numerically dominated by the ploughshares, of which there are 96. Six hoes and a chisel were in the set. There were 32 socketed axes of various shapes, including a boat shaped axehead. This was almost a replica to a clay mound found in the grave of the bronze metalworker at Lang Ca. Sixteen spearheads, a dagger and eight arrowheads were also found. One spearhead generated special interest because it was bimetallic, with an iron blade fitting into a bronze socket.[21]

Excavations in 2004 and 2005 revealed kilns, bricks, stylized ceramic roof tiles, and stone moulds for casting bronze arrowheads, indicating that bronzes were produced locally. Cổ Loa artifacts may be correlated with the presence of an elite which controlled indigenous resources and centralized production of objects, such as bronzes, a sizable proportion of which comprised weapons indicative of increasing conflict in the region and perhaps between Co Loa and the Chinese.[19]

• 
  Âu Việt (Xi Ou) and Lạc Việt (Luo Yue) on map
• 
  Dong Son drum in Cổ Loa
• 
  A square-edge axe with decoration of dog hunting deer, Dong Son culture, 500 BCE-0.
• 
  Pieces of Đông Sơn bronze lamellar armor, 3rd to 1st century BC
• 
  Bronze daggers, Dong Son Culture, 500 BCE - 0.
• 
  The leg ring made from bronze dating from 500 BC-0.
• 
  Water buffalo and farmer figure, 500 BCE
• 
  Bronze lamp base
• 
  Spear and swords, 3rd century BCE
• 
  Bronze arrows found at Cổ Loa Citadel

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• Âu Lạc on Encyclopædia Britannica