Cổ Loa Citadel (Vietnamese: Cổ Loa Thành or Thành Cổ Loa) is a citadel built near Phong Khe, about 20km to the west of today’s Hanoi, during the end of the Hồng Bàng Dynasty (about 257 BCE). Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ) formerly known under French colonization as Annamese ( see Annam) A citadel is a fortress for protecting a Town, sometimes incorporating a Castle. Hanoi ( Vietnamese: Hà Nội Hán Tự: 河[[wikt 内|内]], estimated population 3398889 (2007, is the Capital of Vietnam The Hồng Bàng Dynasty, also known as the Lạc Dynasty, is a Dynasty that supposedly ruled in Vietnam (then known as Văn Lang) for over 2000 The fortress is a spiral-shaped complex of the then new capital. Its name is derived from the Sino-Vietnamese 古螺, meaning "old spiral. " The site has been the source of various relics of the Dong Son culture of the Bronze Age. The Đông Sơn culture was a prehistoric Iron Age culture that was centered at the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam. The term Bronze Age refers to a period in human cultural development when the most advanced Metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use included techniques for [1]
According to folklore, Thuc Phan defeated the last of the Hung kings in 257 BCE and founded the kingdom of Au Lac, choosing the site of Co Loa as his capital. An Dương Vương ( Hán Việt: 安[[wikt 陽|陽]] 王; literally "Peaceful Sun King" is the ruling title of Thục Phán ( 蜀[[wikt Âu Lạc ( is the name of a kingdom considered as an ancestor to the Vietnamese people, existing from 258 BC or 257 BC to 207 BC, with Co Loa is a very large site and is the dominant presence in the northern floodplain of the Red River Delta, which would have required a large amount of labour and resources to have built in its time. The Red River Delta ( Đồng Bằng Sông Hồng) is the flat plain formed by the Red River and its distributaries joining in the Thai Binh River in northern [1]
The site consists of two outer sets of ramparts and a citadel on the inside, of rectangular shape. [1]
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. Arachaeologists 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. [1]
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. [1]
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. [1]
The artefacts are numerically dominated by the ploguhshares, of which there are 96. Six hoes and a chisel were in the set. There wer 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. Lang Ca is an archaeological site in the Red River Delta in Northern Vietnam. [1]
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. [1]
Notes
Reference
- Higham, Charles (1996). A geographic coordinate system enables every location on the Earth to be specified in three coordinates using mainly a spherical coordinate system. The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia. Cambridge World Archaeology. The University of Cambridge (often Cambridge University) located in Cambridge, England, is the second-oldest university in the ISBN 0-521-56505-7.
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