| Abstract: |
Bāi Nội tomb site was located at the eastern rice field of the Đào Vieên hamlet in Nguyệt Đức village (xã), Thuận Thành District, Bắc Ninh Province of the northern Vietnam. The site originally had retained a large mound around 35 to 38 m in diameter but already seriously damaged by the treasure hunter's rooting and soil digging by the local people. In January 2001, we conducted emergent excavation for recording the archaeological information. In Thuan Thanh district, especially in the surroundings of the Lũng Khê citadel, which is 3.5 km far from Bai Noi tomb in north-west direction and functioned as the central government of Chao Chih province in the Late Western Han Dynasty to Six-dynasty period, many brick tombs were reported. The tomb is constructed of bricks and consists of three-barrel vaults (Chamber A, B and C) set in parallel form. The eastern chamber (Chamber A) and middle chamber (Chamber B) are connected by a small barrel vault. The mound and upper structure of the chamber were only confirmed partly at the chamber A and the other chambers remained only their lowest frame. The long axis of the all chambers were set in the direction of 1.5° to 181.5° from the magnetic north. All the entrances of the chambers face the south. The cutting section of Chamber A revealed the slope entrance to the chamber and closing bricks. The chambers A and B are a nested structure of the front and rear vaults. The chamber A is 9.8m in length (excluding closing entrance part), 2.3 m in width in the front part, and 1.8 m in width in the rear part. The chamber itself is divided into three smaller chambers by protruded brick piling. The front, main and rear chambers measure 1.2 x 1.35 m, 2 x 1.8 m and 4.9 x 1.2 m respectively. As the east-west cutting section of Chamber A shows that the lower brick piling consists of square prism shaped bricks and the middle part consists of alternating wedge shaped bricks way and the upper part consists of wedge shaped brick set in arch way. The cutting sections also revealed the way of construction of the mound like the following. They dug out in shallow level the original ground to make the square shaped area and spread the orange silt layer. Then they constructed the brick tomb and heaped the orange soil silt layer and the brown sandy silt layer alternating with each other. The excavated artifacts consist of square brick and burial goods. The bricks include three morphological variants, square prism shaped ones, wedge-shaped ones and curved ones for stacking on the ridge. All of the bricks retain stamped geometric decoration on the one long side face and many of them retain stamped geometric decoration or mark on the short side face. Stamps for decoration on the long side face includes three types: single, double composite, and triple composite ones. The square prism shaped bricks include some size variants like maximum one 53 x 24 x 6 cm to minimum one 46 x 22.5 x 5 cm. The burial goods were mainly found from the main chambers of the Chamber A and Chamber B. The ceramic can be divided into three variants dependent on its fabric. One is grayish white fine fabric frequently with natural glaze. This variant includes jars, a wine jar with tripod and an oval-shaped cup with two handles. The second one is a low-fired grayish white fabric with plenty of sand particles. This variant includes geometric stamped jar. The third one is low-fired reddish brown fragile fabric with plenty of sand particles. This variant includes models of house and related material. Ceramic comparison with the assemblage of Lũng Khê citadel, which is located 5 km in northwest direction from the Bāi Nội site and can be identified as Long Biên, the capital of the Giao Chi Prefecture, and several brick tombs in Thuận Thành district and Thanh Hoa Province make it possible to place Ban Noi pottery assemblage in the later half of the 2nd century AD.
|
