Dong Son culture

The Dong Son culture or the Lạc Việt culture (named for Đông Sơn, a village in Vietnam) was a Bronze Age culture in ancient Vietnam centred at the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam from 1000 BC until the first century AD.[1]:207 It was the last great culture of Văn Lang and continued well into the period of the Âu Lạc state. Its influence spread to other parts of Southeast Asia, including Maritime Southeast Asia, from about 1000 BC to 1 BC.[2][3][4]

Part of a series on
Prehistoric and ancient cultures of Vietnam
Paleolithic
Sơn Vi culture (20,000–12,000 BC)
Mesolithic
Hoabinhian (12,000–10,000 BC)
Neolithic
Bronze Age
Iron Age
Dong Son drum from Sông Đà, Mường Lay, Vietnam. Dong Son II culture. Mid-1st millennium BC. Bronze.

The Dong Son people, also known as Lạc or Lạc Việt, were skilled at cultivating rice, keeping water buffalos and pigs, fishing and sailing in long dugout canoes. They also were skilled bronze casters, which is evidenced by the Dong Son drum found widely throughout northern Vietnam and South China.

To the south of the Dong Son culture was the Sa Huỳnh culture of the proto-Chams.

Identity

According to some scholars, the Dong Son culture spoke Austroasiatic languages.[5][6][7][8][9]

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).[10] The new vocabularies to denote 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 Dong Son culture. Thus, Ferlus conclude that the Dongsonian culture was of Vietic origin and they were the direct ancestors of modern Vietnamese people.[10]

Furthermore, John Phan (2013, 2016)[11][12] argues that “Annamese Middle Chinese” and northern Vietic was spoken in the Red River Valley; and AMC was later absorbed into the coexisting Proto-Viet-Muong, one of whose divergent dialect evolved into Vietnamese language.[13]

Origins
Close-up view of design of a typical Dong Son drum
Bronze figurine, Dong Son culture, from what is now Thailand

The origins of Dong Son culture may be traced back to ancient bronze castings. However, according to archaeological discoveries in Isan, Thailand in the 1970s, the casting of bronze began in Southeast Asia first.[14] The Dong Son bronze industry has a local origin, equivalent in timing to the Gò Mun culture, 700-500 BC. This includes bronze axes, spearheads and knives.

The bronze drums were used for war, "the chief summons the warriors of the tribe by beating the drum", when mourning, and during feasts. "The scenes cast onto the drums would inform us that the Dong Son leaders had access to bronze founders of remarkable skill." Lost-wax casting was based on Chinese founders, but the scenes are local, including drummers and other musicians, warriors, rice processing, birds, deer, war vessels, and geometric designs.[1]:200–202

The bronze drums were made in significant proportions in northern Vietnam and parts of Yunnan. The Dong Son bronze drums exhibit "remarkable skill". The Cổ Loa drum weighs 72 kilograms (159 lb) and would have required the smelting of between 1 and 7 tonnes (1.1 and 7.7 tons) of copper ore.[1]:200

See also

References
  1. Higham, C., 2014, Early Mainland Southeast Asia, Bangkok: River Books Co., Ltd., ISBN 9786167339443
  2. Vietnam Tours Archived 2013-04-26 at the Wayback Machine
  3. Nola Cooke, Tana Li, James Anderson - The Tongking Gulf Through History - Page 46 2011 -"Nishimura actually suggested the Đông Sơn phase belonged in the late metal age, and some other Japanese scholars argued that, contrary to the conventional belief that the Han invasion ended Đông Sơn culture, Đông Sơn artifacts, ..."
  4. Vietnam Fine Arts Museum 2000 "... the bronze cylindrical jars, drums, Weapons and tools which were sophistically carved and belonged to the World famous Đông Sơn culture dating from thousands of years; the Sculptures in the round, the ornamental architectural Sculptures...."
  5. Paine, Lincoln (2013-10-29). The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 171. ISBN 978-0-307-96225-6.
  6. Emigh, John (1996). Masked Performance: The Play of Self and Other in Ritual and Theatre. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-8122-1336-2.
  7. Ooi, Keat Gin (2004). Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia, from Angkor Wat to East Timor. ABC-CLIO. p. 496. ISBN 978-1-57607-770-2.
  8. Alves, Mark (2019-05-10). "Data from Multiple Disciplines Connecting Vietic with the Dong Son Culture". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. Carpenter, Bruce W. (2012). Ethnic Jewellery from Indonesia: Continuity and Evolution : the Manfred Giehmann Collection. Editions Didier Millet. p. 16. ISBN 978-981-4260-68-8.
  10. Ferlus, Michael (2009). "A Layer of Dongsonian Vocabulary in Vietnamese" (PDF). Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. 1: 95–108.
  11. Phan, John. 2013. Lacquered Words: the Evolution of Vietnamese under Sinitic Influences from the 1st Century BCE to the 17th Century CE. Ph.D. dissertation: Cornell University.
  12. Phan, John D. & de Sousa, Hilário. 2016. A preliminary investigation into Proto-Southwestern Middle Chinese. (Paper presented at the International workshop on the history of Colloquial Chinese – written and spoken, Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ, 11–12 March 2016.)
  13. Phan, John. "Re-Imagining 'Annam': A New Analysis of Sino–Viet–Muong Linguistic Contact" in Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, Volume 4, 2010. pp. 22-3
  14. Taylor, Keith W. (1991). The Birth of Vietnam. University of California Press. p. 313. ISBN 0-520-07417-3.


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