The excavation of the Gò Quê burial site reveals many intriguing aspects of the Sa Huỳnh culture: In addition to jars, they also buried the dead in earthen graves.
 |
Archaeologists are excavating (Photo: CAND) |
The Sa Huỳnh culture is renowned and fairly familiar as it was discovered nearly 100 years ago. However, recent excavations have unveiled a wealth of new artifacts and discoveries. Some intriguing new findings were recently revealed during the excavation of the Gò Quê burial site earlier this year.
The first remarkable aspect is the discovery of this burial site. If it weren’t for the land clearance for the construction of a shipbuilding factory in the Dung Quất industrial zone, the residents of Sơn Trà fishing village in Bình Đông commune, Bình Sơn district, Quảng Ngãi province would never have suspected that their village harbored a relic over 2,000 years old.
This burial site is nestled within a mound, with burial depths reaching up to 4 meters from the mound’s peak, far deeper than any civilian construction could reach.
Typically, burial sites are only dug about 50 cm deep. So why did the Sa Huỳnh people here exert the effort to dig such deep graves for their deceased? The answer will only emerge once the excavation site is completed and the original landscape is reconstructed. It turns out that the mound here wasn’t as high initially.
Ancient people buried their dead at depths similar to other regions. However, after more than 2,000 years, a large mound has buried the entire burial site. This phenomenon is primarily due to… the wind. The burial area is heavily exposed to strong winds from the bay, causing sand dunes to drift across a wide area, eventually completely covering the ancient graves.
The second remarkable aspect is the burial practices of the ancients. For nearly a century of discovering and studying Sa Huỳnh culture, scholars have generally associated the Sa Huỳnh people with the practice of burying their dead in jars. There may be different opinions on how these jars were used.
 |
A jar burial (Photo: CAND) |
For instance, some believe that corpses were placed whole inside jars, while others suggest cremation occurred first, with ashes then placed in the jars (a form of cremation). Some scholars have gone further to hypothesize that there were no actual corpses in the jars at all, but rather it was a symbolic burial method. Since the Sa Huỳnh people were closely connected to the sea, their livelihoods were intertwined with coastal currents, and upon death, they would send their bodies back to the sea, only to bury ceramic jars and burial goods in the sand dunes as a way to honor the deceased…
Despite the ongoing debates, there seems to be a consensus on one point: the ceramic jars are an inseparable part of the burial customs of the Sa Huỳnh people. In fact, in some areas such as the Sa Huỳnh estuary in Đức Phổ district, Quảng Ngãi, when discovered in the early 20th century, there were so many jars that French archaeologist H. Parmentier could only refer to it as the “Sa Huỳnh jar burial site.”
However, recent findings indicate otherwise, particularly at the Gò Quê burial site. In addition to jars, the dead were also buried in earthen graves. The corpses were laid down, and pottery was smashed, even breaking entire jars to scatter the pieces around the body. The ratio of earthen graves to jar graves here is 13 earthen graves to 18 jar graves, suggesting that the ancients had two burial methods, with similar grave goods and pottery fragments.
Not many Sa Huỳnh burial sites exhibit both burial methods. This also contributes to disputing the hypothesis that the Sa Huỳnh people discarded their dead into the sea. In reality, they did bury their relatives in jars (recent scientific experiments have shown that jars can accommodate bodies provided they are curled up, resembling a fetal position) and also buried individuals laid flat (the length of the grave and the arrangement of the pottery fragments align with the height of an adult).
The third remarkable aspect concerns the burial goods at the Gò Quê site. Archaeologists were astonished to find a series of bronze artifacts from the Đông Sơn culture here, to the extent that it felt like excavating a genuine Đông Sơn cultural site, unmistakably distinct. These include: 6 rectangular bronze axes with geometric patterns, broad axe with fish-tail-shaped mouth, leaf-shaped spearheads, T-shaped hilt daggers, and breastplates with spiral patterns.
This evidence indicates that, at that time, the ancestors of the Vietnamese and Cham peoples were engaging in trade and cultural exchange. Previously, based on existing documents, French archaeologist M. Colani suggested that Đông Sơn bronze artifacts had only made their way to the Cương Hà and Cổ Giang regions (Quảng Bình). Now, it seems that Đông Sơn bronze artifacts extended even further, at least into northern Quảng Ngãi, the heart of Sa Huỳnh culture.
The fourth remarkable aspect: for the first time, archaeologists discovered a unique artifact. This is a sword with a blade made of iron and a hilt made of bronze. Such artifacts made from both metals are rarely found in Vietnam and are considered a type of “bronze-iron alloy.” The sword is exquisitely crafted, especially the bronze hilt composed of multiple tubes and rings enclosing a wooden core.
Associate Professor Dr. Trịnh Sinh
