Letting the past serve the present

Letting the past serve the present - some contemporary uses of archaeology in Viet Nam. Archaeology and history in Viet Nam Viet Nam has a long tradition of scholarly concern with its ownpast, born out of 900 years of resistance to Chinese politicaldomination. As early as the 11th century, the newly independent Lydynasty encouraged the collection of antiquities such as ancient bronzedrums to help legitimize le��git��i��mize?tr.v. le��git��i��mized, le��git��i��miz��ing, le��git��i��miz��esTo legitimate.le��git the new state by establishing links with thepre-Han past. A well-established historiographic tradition developedfrom this time which emphasized indigenous dynasties and institutions.As Nguyen (1987: 42) made clear, 'the safeguarding of nationalindependence' was the basic concern of Ly and Tran rulers(11th-14th centuries) and their chroniclers - the theme which rimsthrough Vietnamese history to the present day. In contrast to this,Chinese and French historians have, as Taylor notes (1983: xvii),treated early historic Viet Nam within the framework of Chinese history- as a 'refractory province blessed with China's civilizinginfluence'. Nothing makes the relativism of our perceptions of thepast clearer than a comparison of recent Chinese and Vietnameseunderstanding of this relationship (cf. Han Xiaorong 1998). But ofcourse the histories of Viet Nam and China cannot be separated; much of'Vietnamese' history depends on Chinese dynastic chronicles,and those written in what is today northern Viet Nam, were written untilquite recently in Chinese characters and within the Chinesehistoriographic tradition. The sources so well brought together by KeithTaylor Cllr Keith Taylor (born 1 August 1953 in Southend, Essex) is an English politician and senior figure in the Green Party of England and Wales. He was one of the two Principal Speakers of the party from August 2004 (succeeding the late Dr Mike Woodin)[1] (1983: 349-59), e.g. the Shih chi, the Huai nan tzu, LiTao-yuan's Shui ching chu and Liu Hsi's Shih ming are aproduct of this. Colonialist archaeology It can, I think, be accepted that the whole concept of prehistory prehistory,period of human evolution before writing was invented and records kept. The term was coined by Daniel Wilson in 1851. It is followed by protohistory, the period for which we have some records but must still rely largely on archaeological evidence to was a European one and its development within Europe was profoundlyinfluenced by the social, political and commercial links between Europeand the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Americas. In order to understandthe way European prehistory has influenced and been influenced by theexperience of investigation in non-Western countries, Trigger's(1984) distinction between what he calls'nationalist, colonialist and imperialist archaeologies'provides a useful framework for this exercise and one I have utilizedpreviously (Bray & Glover 1988; Glover 1993). Trigger (1984: 360-3)characterized colonialist archaeology as a distinct mode ofarchaeological thought in which archaeologists and ethnologists regardedthe cultures of Africa, Asia and the Americas as a living museum of thepast. The first generation of prehistorians working in Southeast Asiaall adopted, to a greater or lesser extent, this dominant mode ofthought and also contemporary European archaeological procedures:concentration on material form and typology typology/ty��pol��o��gy/ (ti-pol��ah-je) the study of types; the science of classifying, as bacteria according to type. typologythe study of types; the science of classifying, as bacteria according to type. for the recognition ofculture groups and culture areas, and explanation of all change in thearchaeological record The archaeological record is a term used in archaeology to denote all archaeological evidence, including the physical remains of past human activities which archaeologists seek out and record in an attempt to analyze and reconstruct the past. as the result of the diffusion of techniques orthe migration of peoples from one culture area to another - what wemight call the Volkerwanderungen syndrome. This may have satisfiedcontemporary European perceptions of the structure of social processes,but it has meant little to a later generation of scholars in SoutheastAsia. The paradigm, almost universally held in the heyday of Europeancolonial rule in Asia and Africa, that societies do not change withoutexternal stimulation denigrated indigenous cultures, characterized themas uninventive and static and put them on a level with'primitive' phases of European development, thus helping tojustify the 'civilizing mission' of Europe in bringingbackward native peoples up to the cultural level of the 20th century. Thus, it was not until the late 19th century, with the arrival inViet Nam of another predatory imperial power, France, that analternative procedure for knowing the Vietnamese past became available -the discipline of archaeology - and a new dialectic with this past wasestablished. From the 1840s, France, following the example of Britain, wasdetermined to acquire a colonial empire in the tropics tropics,also called tropical zone or torrid zone, all the land and water of the earth situated between the Tropic of Cancer at lat. 23 1-2°N and the Tropic of Capricorn at lat. 23 1-2°S. in order togenerate raw materials for her rapidly developing industries. The earlyyears of French expansion and rule in Indochina, starting soon after theattack on Tourane (Da Nang) in 1858, brought to the attention of westernscholars the remains of much earlier civilizations. These scholars foundthe remains of the Cham people For the ethnic Albanian minority of northern Greece, see Cham Albanians.The Cham people are an ethnic group living in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. Speaking the Cham language, they are considered to be descendants of the kingdom of Champa. extending from around Hue, south to nearSai See Statement of Additional Information. Gon, with its temples, sculpture and inscriptions, and, of course,the great monuments of Cambodia, especially around Tonle Sap Tonle SapLake, western Cambodia. The largest freshwater body in mainland Southeast Asia, it receives several tributaries as well as the floodwaters of the Mekong River. - the GreatLake - especially interesting. The monuments of Cambodia werere-discovered by Henri Muhot in 1860 (Rooney 1998) as part of the Frenchdrive for a riverine riv��er��ine?adj.1. Relating to or resembling a river.2. Located on or inhabiting the banks of a river; riparian: "Members of a riverine tribe ... route into South China, to bypass the Britishcontrol of the Yangzi Valley trade, and the explorer/scholars of theMission Pavie revealed the material framework of early historicIndochina. A learned society on the model of the Royal Asiatic Society The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (RAS) was, according to its Royal Charter of August 11, 1824, established to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia. , theSociete des Etudes Indochinoises was founded in Sai Gon in 1865 toprovide a forum for colons and administrators to learn about their newacquisition; however, it was only with the establishment of the Ecolefrancaise d'Extreme-orient (EFEO EFEO ��cole Fran?aise d'Extr��me-Orient ) between 1898 and 1900 that asustained archaeological programme for the investigation of pre- andprotohistory pro��to��his��to��ry?n.The study of a culture just before the time of its earliest recorded history.pro was possible. French scholars approached Indochina throughtheir knowledge of India and China and, not surprisingly, paid mostattention to the monuments of 'advanced' civilizations, suchas that of the Indianized Cham (2nd-15th centuries AD) of central andsouthern Viet Nam. Higham (1989): 17-20) provides a brief, butconveniently accessible summary of the main developments of Frencharchaeology in Indochina. Taking a typically colonialist attitude, many French scholars sawthe Vietnamese, Annamese and Cambodians as having relapsed from a formerhigher level of culture, long ago brought from China and India, and nowrequiring infusions of foreign modernizing ideas and institutions. This,of course lent intellectual support to their own 'missionciviliatrice'. Nevertheless, one cannot say that this was theprimary motivation behind the work of the researchers of the EFEO whichwas fortunate in the appointment of a series of brilliant scholars;Louis Finot Louis Finot (born July 8, 1909 in Saint-Maur-des-Foss��s, deceased February 14, 1996) was a French international soccer player between 1930 and 1934 (7 selections some equips France HAS). he evolved to the post of half one. the first director, Etienne Aymonier, Bergaine, Barth, PaulPelliot Paul Pelliot (May 28, 1878–October 26, 1945) was a French sinologist and explorer of Central Asia. A pupil of Sylvain L��vi, Pelliot conducted only one archaeological expedition into Central Asia. , Aurousseau, Georges Coedes and the great Henri Parmentier,whose work on the documentation, conservation and publication of themonuments of Champa and Cambodia was an outstanding achievement.Parmentier travelled by boat and ox-cart in all seasons throughoutIndochina, usually accompanied by his dog and partner (Jeanne Leuba,herself a scholar and the wife of Louis Finot, Parmentier'ssuperior). But the driving force behind the move of the EFEO frommetropolitan France Metropolitan France (French: France m��tropolitaineor la M��tropole, or colloquially l'Hexagone) is the part of France located in Europe, including Corsica. to Ha Noi at the turn of the century, and itsscientific and cultural agenda, was Paul Doumer, the dynamic andambitious Governor-General. Early perceptions of the Dong Son Culture Dong Son cultureImportant prehistoric culture of mainland Southeast Asia that developed in the 1st millennium BC, best known for its bronzes. Excavations at the site of Dong Son in northern Vietnam revealed bronze objects, iron, pottery, and Chinese artifacts. (c. 6th century BC-AD200) These French scholars were working within the liberal tradition ofEuropean scholarship and did not, I am sure, see their work as no morethan an intellectual prop for a quite ruthless extractive extractive/ex��trac��tive/ (-tiv) any substance present in an organized tissue, or in a mixture in a small quantity, and requiring extraction by a special method. ex��trac��tiveadj.1. colonialregime. Nevertheless, their interpretations were unashamedly un��a��shamed?adj.Feeling or showing no remorse, shame, or embarrassment:una��sham colonialistin slant. When objects from what we now call the Dong Son Culture of theRed and Ma River Valleys first came to their notice it was thought to beintrusive. Writing about the find of a great bronze drum near Ha Noi,Louis Finot (1919: 216) commented, Should one not recognise in this . . . those Indonesians whomlinguistics and ethnography showed us established on the coast ofIndochina, and then abandoning these shores to new arrivals [theVietnamese?] carried to the islands of the archipelago their language,of which the mainland has preserved but the debris, and their customs .. . The Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren (1942) saw Dong Son Dong Son is the name of a number of towns and villages in Vietnam. Tinh Tien Giang > Dong Son Tinh Thanh Hoa > Dong Son Tinh Ha Bac > Dong Son Tinh Quang Nam-Da Nang > Dong Son Tinh An Giang > Ap Dong Son See also asbasically Chinese, while Heine-Geldern (1937) derived the culture by aseries of complex migrations from an ancestral homeland somewhere inSouthern Russia and the Caucuses - his Thraco-Cimmerian migration. OlovJanse, who actually excavated at Dong Son (1958), could still describethe graves he found as 'Indonesian' in contrast to thebrick-built Han and Tang Chinese tombs at the site (2nd and 7th-9thcenturies AD). It was left to a later generation of Vietnamesearchaeologists to identify the Dong Son Culture with the ancestral LacViet peoples whose roots lay back in their traditional homeland, in aseries of Neolithic and bronze cultures (Phung Nguyen, Dong Dau and GoMun) stretching back at least 2000 years. The Cham civilization Further to the south, pioneering French scholars [ILLUSTRATION FORFIGURES 1 - 4 OMITTED] had also revealed the ruined towers of the Champeoples, whose alien origins seems more secure; their language belongedto the Austronesian family, closely linked to the languages of northernBorneo and perhaps Sumatra. Their rulers at least, were heavilyIndianized, built temples dedicated to Shiva, used Sanskrit for theirinscriptions and gave themselves Indian names such as Bhadravarman,Rudravarman and Indravarman. Likewise their cities were called Simhapuraor Vijaya; their polities, Amaravati, Kauthara and Paduranga. The Cham, like their neighbours in Cambodia, provided the French aperfect example of how cultures could wither and decay without externalstimulation. Inspired by the flowering of Indian Hindu culture in theearly centuries of the Christian era Christian eran.The period beginning with the birth of Jesus.Christian EraNounthe period beginning with the year of Christ's birthNoun 1. it appeared to the French that theCham and Khmer people The Khmer people are the predominant ethnic group in Cambodia, accounting for approximately 90% of the 13.9 million people in the country. Part of the larger Mon-Khmer ethnolinguistic peoples found throughout Southeast Asia, they speak the Khmer language. had declined into a slothful sloth��ful?adj.Disinclined to work or exertion; lazy. See Synonyms at lazy.slothful��ly adv. apathy. Jean-YvesClaeys, archaeologist and ethnographer who worked extensively in the oldCham territories of Central Viet Nam in the 1920s-30s, contrasted theirpresent miserable state with past greatness. Some Europeans were atfirst unwilling to accept that the 'backward' native peoplesthey encountered in Indochina could have been responsible for the greattemples of Cambodia and Champa.(1) A later generation saw them as theresult of stimulation and assimilation of tribal society following thearrival of more civilized (Indian) peoples. There was also in the colonial period some interest in earlierprehistory, especially by geologists and school teachers such as HenriMansuy, Madeleine Colani, Etienne Patte and Edmond Saurin, but seriousemphasis was given to prehistoric archaeology only after theindependence of North Viet Nam in 1954, and the establishment of anInstitute of Archaeology The Institute of Archaeology is an academic department of University College London (UCL), in the United Kingdom. The Institute is located in a separate building at the north end of Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. in Ha Noi. The interaction of archaeology, history and national politics thereis well covered by others in this section, notably by Hyung Il Pai. Iwant merely to point to the parallels between the history of archaeology The history of archaeology has been one of increasing professionalisation, and the use of an increasing range of techniques, to obtain as much data on the site being examined as possible. OriginsThe exact origins of archaeology as a discipline are uncertain. in Viet Nam and Korea. Both countries lie on boundaries of the Chinesecultural sphere, parts of both countries were conquered by the expandingHan Empire. Both were much later colonized by external powers - Franceand Japan - and archaeology was first introduced by these colonialpowers and used, in part at least, to justify their rule. And the past50 or so years have seen a decisive rejection of many of theinterpretations put on the archaeological data by the colonists. Post-colonial archaeology in Viet Nam Both under, and following, French rule archaeology has beendominated, if not quite monopolized, by state organizations; first theEFEO, and since independence in 1945 the Institute of Archaeology andthe National Museum of History in Ha Noi (formerly the Musee Louis Finotof the EFEO). In newly independent Viet Nam, though, priority was placedon nationalist and Marxist perspectives, and students of archaeologysent for training in China, Russia and eastern Europe. Archaeology thussecured its place in rebuilding the national identity (FIGURES 5 - 6).The main focus of the new research of the 1950s and 1960s was toidentify the ancestral cultures of the Lac Viet peoples in theirhomeland on the plains of the Red River Valley See also the Red River disambiguation page.The Red River Valley is a region in central North America that is drained by the Red River of the North. where the LateBronze-Iron Age Dong Son Culture was seen as the 'glorious productof the Vietnamese people before their subjection to Han Imperialhegemony'. Archaeology was thus used to show that the Vietnamesepeoples had achieved political maturity and high standards of culturalexpression before the Chinese invasions. A recurrent theme in recentVietnamese historical and archaeological writing has been its longresistance to Chinese cultural hegemony. For instance, Van Trong (1979:6) argues that the presence of imported bronzes from China in Dong Sonassemblages 'only heightens the vitality of the Vietnamese culture,an independent one, of deep and solid basis . . . having resolutelyrefused to be submerged by Chinese culture while many other cultureswere subjugated and annihilated'. It is a paradox that a country materially so poor, barelyrecovering from over 30 years of war against the Japanese, French,Americans and Chinese, devoted so much attention to archaeology, but thepast has a moral force in Viet Nam, unequalled perhaps anywhere in theworld, and in the process of trying to reassert a Vietnamese nationalityarchaeology has played an important part. The Vietnamese see in theirBronze Age, what they call the Dong Dau, Go Mun and Dong Son periods(from the late 2nd to late 1st millennium Be) as the first flowering ofnative Vietnamese genius(2) leading to the creation of a territorialpolitical state or states (see Ha Van Tan 1991) with high levels oftechnical and artistic skills, before their subjection to Han Chineseimperialism at the start of the Christian Era. Vietnamese histories, atleast those written until the last few years, tend to leap over the'Feudal period' (2nd-11th centuries) and emphasize the ethnic,linguistic and social continuities from the Dong Son to the medieval eraof the independent Ly and Tran Dynasties (11th-14th centuries). For some 20 years from the late 1950s, despite the pressures ofwar, Vietnamese archaeologists undertook a vigorous programme of surveyand excavation in the north, and during this time research in thearchaeology of central and southern Viet Nam was neglected. Much of thearea was, of course, under the control of the French and later the USsatellite government in Sai Gon; and it was also the traditionalhomeland of the Cham and Khmer peoples, long traditional enemies of theVietnamese and only subjugated from the 15th century. With unificationin 1975, northern (and some southern) Vietnamese archaeologists startedto work in the central and southern parts of the country and to identifya series of regional sequences from Neolithic to metal age, named fromtype-sites or regions. Greatest emphasis was put on the Sa Huynh Culture The Sa Huynh culture (Vietnamese: Văn h��a Sa Huỳnh; 1000 BC - 200) was an archaeological culture in central and southern Vietnam. Archaeological sites from the culture range from the Mekong Delta to just south of the Tonkin region. (c. 600 BC-C. AD200), thought to be ancestral to the historic Cham civilization androughly contemporary with the Dong Son. Since about 1990, Vietnamesearchaeologists and historians have also started to take a greaterinterest in the Cham civilization itself. Whereas the French hadstressed the intrusive nature of the Cham, their 'civilized'and Indian aspects, the Vietnamese, with their nationalistic and Marxistperspectives, looked for continuities from the past prehistoric culture,and see the Cham civilization as the product of local evolutionaryforces. No longer a threat to national unity, the Indianized Chamcivilization could now be valued as a glory of a greater Vietnamesetradition, and promoted for tourism. More recently these institutions have been joined by researchworkers from the Centre for Archaeology of the National Institute ofSocial Science in Sai Gon, and academics from the Departments of Historyat Ha Noi National University and the University of Hue. From the late1980s there also has been an increasing degree of collaboration betweenVietnamese and overseas archaeologists, starting with an American teamresearching into Pleistocene hominids. This was followed by Japanesearchaeologists excavating the Bronze Age site of Lang Vac (Dong SonCulture) and medieval kiln sites in the Red River Valley and in BinhDinh province in Central Viet Nam; a group from the Universities ofLondon and Tokyo researching at Tra Kieu into the origins of the ChamCivilization; both German and Japanese archaeologists investigating theSa Huynh culture itself in Central Viet Nam; an American post-graduatestudent excavating a pre-Dong Son Bronze Age site in the Red River.Other Japanese archaeologists have excavated in 1996-97 in the Dong Naibasin with the archaeological team from Sai Gon; a Hong Kong Chinesearchaeologist has been involved in joint research at Trang Kenh, anearly metal-age jade factory site near Hai Phong; and most recentlyPierre-Yves Manguin of the EFEO has resumed field investigations inpre-Angkor Khmer archaeology around Oc Eo in the trans-Bassac region ofthe Mekong Delta - following on from the pioneering work of LouisMalleret in the 1940s and the still more extensive field investigationsof Vietnamese archaeologists from 1975 - the list is not exhaustive. Ihave heard for example that an Australian team is to undertake (or hascompleted) a geophysical survey of Cham sites around Tra Kieu, and agroup including archaeologist from the USA, Britain and New Zealand New Zealand(zē`lənd), island country (2005 est. pop. 4,035,000), 104,454 sq mi (270,534 sq km), in the S Pacific Ocean, over 1,000 mi (1,600 km) SE of Australia. The capital is Wellington; the largest city and leading port is Auckland. isplanning survey, mapping and excavation on Dong Son - Han period sitesin Ninh Binh Province Ninh B��nh (Vietnamese: Ninh B��nh; Han Tu: ) is a province of Vietnam, in the Red River Delta region of the northern part of the country. Capital city: Ninh B��nh Area: 1,382 km2 Population: 891,800 Average temperature: 23. south of Ha Noi. This growing foreignparticipation in Vietnamese archaeology will undoubtedly bring aboutsubstantial changes in the research priorities, field andpost-excavation methodology of Vietnamese archaeology and help to placeVietnamese prehistory more firmly in its proper place in the widerarchaeology and early history of East and Southeast Asia. But whether itwill much affect the traditional agenda of Vietnamese archaeologistsfrom their search for the ancient roots of the Lac Viet peoples in theirtraditional homelands of the Red River Valley remains to be seen. However, one recent change in the Vietnamese concern with theirpast has been the growth of the heritage management industry. Theneologism A new word or new meaning for an existing word. The high-tech field routinely creates neologisms, especially new meanings. Years ago, there was no doubt that a "mouse" referred only to a furry, little rodent. 'Cultural Heritage', coined I think in England aslate as the 1970s, and its associated baggage of UNESCO-funded experts,workshops, postgraduate courses, administrative officials and touristdevelopments has spread to Southeast and East Asia with a vengeance.Hyung Il Pai discusses this in her paper in Korea; in Thailand,archaeology is now little more than an adjunct of the tourist industry,and I witnessed some extreme manifestations of it at first hand on arecent visit to Japan. Viet Nam has not so long back caught the'heritage' disease. The past is also being re-invented,sanitized, simplified and packaged for tourist consumption by bothinternal and foreign tourists, and I suspect that this will have moreeffect in the next few years on the way the past is investigated andpresented than any shifts in academic paradigms. Thus I want to end thisbrief and too-superficial paper with some comments on tourism andarchaeology in Viet Nam. Cultural tourism and archaeology in Viet Nam Until the late 1980s, tourism of any sort to Viet Nam was limitedto official cultural delegations and a few groups from'friendly', mainly eastern-bloc countries. However, followingthe 1986 Communist Party Congress, a more open policy (doi moi) wasinaugurated and since then Viet Nam has steadily relaxed internalcontrols, opened to the capitalist world and invited inward investment.At first only tolerating visitors, the authorities soon started toencourage and promote organized tourism, in which cultural tourism - tohistoric monuments, archaeological sites and 'heritage'locations in general - plays a significant, if not yet major, role (seeGlover 1996 and 1997 for some earlier discussions of this topic). The past 10 years have seen something like a 16-fold increase ininternational tourist arrivals. From 92,500 international visitors in1988 the numbers rose to 280,000 in 1990, 440,000 in 1992 and 1.8million in 1996. The first six months of 1997, however, saw a 7% decline(Vu Tuan Canh 1997) and Vietnamese newspaper reports mention an 11%decline in tourst arrivals through 1998. This notwithstanding, theVietnamese Institute for Tourist Development predicts that arrivals toViet Nam will rise to 3.8 million in the year 2000 and 8.7 million by2010 (Nguyen & Le 1997: table 1). As indicated, Viet Nam has only recently become a major touristdestination. Tourist infrastructure is still weak, but private smallhotels have proliferated and some of the old French colonial hotels havebeen renovated at huge expense. Organized tour groups, especially fromChina, France, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and the USA, are nowfrequent sights. What are the attractions? What do they go to see? A great attraction, of course, is the pure novelty. Viet Nam is anew destination for Westerners who have been everywhere else. There isvalue in being able to say that you have been there before your friendsand neighbours. Historic monuments have an important place in thiscultural one-upmanship. Most attractive, however, are the sites to whichthe visitors can identify, from the battlefields of Dien Bien Phu Dien Bien PhuVietminh rout of French paved way for partition of Vietnam (1954). [Fr. Hist.: Van Doren, 541]See : Defeat (especially for the French) to the sights of the Vietnamese War ofUnification. Here, the Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi and Ben Duocnorthwest of Saigon [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7 OMITTED], the bunkers andminefields of the former 'DMZ' around the 17th parallel, andthe Khe Sanh combat base are powerful attractions, not only formiddle-aged Americans who fought in Viet Nam, but also for a youngergeneration who know Viet Nam only from protest songs of theirparents' generation. A quick trawl trawl - To sift through large volumes of data (e.g. Usenet postings, FTP archives, or the Jargon File) looking for something of interest. through Viet Nam URLs on the World Wide Web, andpublic library holdings in London, suggests strongly that the Viet NamWar, its memories and mementoes are the foremost attraction to VietNam-bound tourists from the USA and Europe - about two-thirds of allentries on Viet Nam dealt with some aspects of that conflict. On acruise which called into Sai Gon in early 1997, on which I was guestlecturer, the only organized land tours offered there by the Vietnamesetour company were to the Cu Chi tunnels, the War Crimes Museum and tothe 'Re-unification Hall', former palace of the President ofSouth Viet Nam. A BBC BBCin full British Broadcasting Corp.Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. radio programme heard in September 1997 similarlyemphasized the attraction of battlefield sites. For middle-aged French tour groups, especially, going to Viet Namis a form of nostalgia for a mythical colonial past, where there waspeace (of a sort and for a while), cheap food and servants, andluxurious living for a ruling caste. This sort of nostalgia inspired,and was encouraged by, the 1991 French film Indochine. For thesetourists, the grand hotels and public buildings are a major attraction.These are fine examples of Beaux beaux?n.A plural of beau. Arts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles,built by the French between the 1880s and 1935. They are indeed asplendid architectural heritage, and it is to be hoped that they are notswept away as Viet Nam rebuilds. Other major tourist attractions are the two National Museums ofHistory in Ha Noi and Saigon. These are fine buildings in themselves,and have magnificent, if not always adequately displayed, collectionsillustrating Vietnamese culture from the Palaeolithic to the independentmedieval dynasties. Not surprisingly, the dominant theme of the twoNational Museums in Ha Noi and Sai Gon is the early maturing of theculture of the Lac Viet peoples in the Red River Valley, theirsubjection to 'brutal Han imperialism', the struggle forindependence and resistance to the repeated Chinese invasions - whichwere real enough. The perceptive visitor, however, will see the almosttotal sinicization of Vietnamese cultural style from the'feudal' period onwards. China may have been resistedpolitically, but in everything from food habits to architecture;clothing to decorative ornament; religious rituals to administrativestructures Viet Nam became a province of China. Individual museums arealso dedicated to the ethnography of Viet Nam's minority peoples,the People's Army, to the Revolution, and to the life of Ho ChiMinh Ho Chi Minh(hô chē mĭn), 1890–1969, Vietnamese nationalist leader, president of North Vietnam (1954–69), and one of the most influential political leaders of the 20th cent. His given name was Nguyen That Thanh. , who also has a Soviet-style mausoleum mausoleum(môsəlē`əm), a sepulchral structure or tomb, especially one of some size and architectural pretension, so called from the sepulcher of that name at Halicarnassus, Asia Minor, erected (c.352 B.C. in Ha Noi. Finally, one comes to the more purely archaeological and builtheritage; not insignificant but not yet, I think, high on thetourist's list of priorities. In the north there are numeroustemples and pagodas in a modified provincial Chinese style. At Hue, theremains of a citadel, a royal palace and funerary fu��ner��ar��y?adj.Of or suitable for a funeral or burial.[Latin fner temples of the Nguyenrulers of the 19th century are magnets for internal and foreign touristsboth for their intrinsic beauty and charm of location, and - for thelatter - from their association with the 1968 Tet offensive. Old Hue hasrecently been scheduled by UNESCO UNESCO:see United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. UNESCOin full United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a World Heritage site. From Da Nang southwards, 20 or so Cham temples offer a view of avery different cultural tradition. Smaller, less imposing and far lesswell-known than the great monuments of the Khmer civilization inCambodia, they have suffered from neglect and sometime deliberatedestruction by American and South Vietnamese forces. Many Cham towersare, however, still picturesque ruins, graceful in their details (Sharma1992) and those at Mi Son are now under consideration for scheduling asa World Heritage site. What is the future of cultural tourism to Viet Nam? As indicatedearlier, the rapid growth of the early 1990s is over and numbers seem tobe dropping. Viet Nam Today of March/April 1997 carried an articleentitled 'The Hotel and Tourism Industry - Distress Alert'which blamed the too-rapid construction of mediocre hotels with poorstandards of service, low occupancy rates and which over-charge for themarket, poor infra-structure, especially of internal travel andcommunications - a case of 'too much, too soon'. The figuresprojected by the Institute of Tourist Development only a year ago seemwildly over-optimistic. Certainly tourist facilities in Viet Nam do notat present compete in quality-for-price with those of Thailand, Malaysiaand the Philippines, and I suspect that the novelty of going to see VietNam has worn off. Those who wanted to get there before their friendshave done so and are moving on to yet more exotic locations. Arelatively new development has been the cruise ships which call in at afew locations, Ha Long Bay, Da Nang, Nha Trang and Sai Gon, and givewell-off foreign tourists a glimpse of Viet Nam without having toexperience the discomfort of inland travel. But even here there areproblems and one cruise company, Swan Hellenic, is cutting down on stopson account of the excessive port charges in Viet Nam. Another problem facing cultural tourism to Viet Nam is thepolitical situation in Cambodia; most tours organized by foreignoperators, which account for nearly half of the foreign travellerscoming into Viet Nam, link together visits to two or three countriessuch as Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Viet Nam and the Philippines; andin terms of cultural attractions, the temples at Angkor are the starattraction. The recent and continuing political uncertainty in PhnomPenh following the 'incidents' (read 'coup') of July1997 can only adversely affect tourist arrivals in Viet Nam. And finally, it is interesting to see that not everyone in theVietnamese Government unquestioningly accepts the benefits of tourism.An article by Jeremy Grant in the Financial Times of 26 September 1997,quoting from the Viet Nam News Việt Nam News (VNS) is a daily English-language newspaper, published in Hanoi by the Vietnam News Agency, the news service of the government of Vietnam. The newspaper was first published in 1991. Agency, reported 'a bizarre attackon foreign tourists, accusing them of treachery, smuggling, drugtrafficking, sex abuse and even assassination AssassinationSee also Murder.assassinsFanatical Moslem sect that smoked hashish and murdered Crusaders (11th—12th centuries). [Islamic Hist.: Brewer Note-Book, 52]Brutusconspirator and assassin of Julius Caesar. [Br. . . . the opening up totourists in the 1990s had brought with it a litany of evils such asespionage and sex crimes. "Hostile elements" posing astourists were trespassing in restricted areas to obtain sensitiveinformation on national security'. With paranoia like this in highplaces, the immediate future of cultural tourism in Viet Nam faces moreproblems than those presented by poor hotel service and bad roads. Summary Looking to the future of archaeology and cultural tourism in VietNam it is not easy to predict just how things will develop; jointresearch projects with foreign scholars are likely to continue, evenincrease in the medium term, with the inevitable broadening of fieldmethodologies and approaches to the study of the past. With theweakening of extreme forms of ethnic and political nationalismVietnamese archaeologists are themselves likely to turn away from narrowMarxist and nationalist agendas, leading to more diversity in researchgoals. In the field of cultural tourism, Viet Nam has a lot to offer butis competing in a tight market. Tourist infrastructure is improving, butas the novelty of 'doing Viet Nam' wears off cultural touristauthorities will need to be more selective, better informed and moresophisticated in the presentation of Viet Nam's long history. 1 'The first western visitors to Cambodia, finding the ruinsof ancient temples slumbering (though not lost or forgotten) in theforest, were at first unwilling to believe that they were built by theKhmers themselves . . . accordingly marvellous theories were propoundedto account for the ruins. The first-comers from Portugal and Spain inthe 16th century thought that the monuments must have been built by theJews, or perhaps by Alexander the Great, or by Romans under the EmperorTrajan. The Portuguese traveller Diego do Couto thought that they musthave been built by Indians' (Mabbett & Chandler 1995: 2). 2 There is a curious irony in the fact that recent socio-linguisticresearch (Chamberlain (1998) indicates that the dominant language of theRed River Valley in 'Dong Son times' is more likely to havebeen a form of early Tai rather than Vietic. A proposition which, notsurprisingly, has been strenuously resisted by Vietnamese scholars. References BRAY, W.M. & I.C. GLOVER. 1988. Scientific investigation orcultural imperialism; British Archaeology in the 3rd World, Bulletin ofthe Institute of Archaeology 24: 109-25. CHAMBERLAIN, J.R. 1998. The origin of the Sek - implications forTai and Vietnamese history, Journal of the Siam Society 86: 27-48. FINOT, L. 1919. L'Asie francaise. Paris. GLOVER, I.C. 1993. Other peoples' pasts - Westernarchaeologists and Thai Prehistory, Journal of the Siam Society 81(1):45-53. 1996. The birth of cultural tourism in Viet Nam, in J. 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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). . JANSE, 0. 1958. Archaeological research in Indo-China 3: Theancient dwelling-site of Dong-so'n (Thanh-Hoa, Annam). Bruges: StCatherine's Press. KARLGREN, B. 1942. The date of the early Dong-s'on culture,Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (?stasiatiska Museet), Stockholm, Sweden. Public museum launched by Sweden's Parliament in 1926, with the Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874-1960) as founding director. 14: 1-28. MABBETT, I. & D. CHANDLER. 1995. The Khmers. Oxford: Blackwell. NGUYEN KHAC VIEN. 1987. Viet Nam - a long history. Ha Noi: ForeignLanguages Publishing House Foreign Languages Publishing House is a publishing firm in North Korea. It employes a small group of foreigners to edit foreign-language editions of North Korean texts. . NGUYEN VAN BINH & LE VAN MINH. 1997. Viet Nam tourism: currentstate and prospect, Pacific Tourism Review 1:173-5. ROONEY, D. 1998. In the footsteps of Henri Mouhot. A Frenchexplorer in 19th century Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, SPAFA SPAFA Southern Piedmont Adoptive Families of America, Inc. Journal8(1): 5-16. SHARMA, J.C. 1992. Temples of Champa in Vietnam. Ha Noi: Nha XuatBan Hoa Hoc Hoi. TAYLOR, K.W. 1983. The birth of Viet Nam. Berkeley (CA): Universityof California The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States). . TRIGGER, B.G. 1984. Alternative archaeologies: nationalist,colonialist, imperialist, Man 19: 355-70. VAN TRONG. 1979. New knowledge on Dong-s'on culture fromarchaeological discoveries these twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights. 2. ago, in Recent discoveriesand new views on some archaeological problems in Viet Nam: 1-8. Ha Noi:Institute of Archaeology. VU TUAN CANH. 1997. Viet Nam Tourism Master Plan with Environmentand Resource Management Strategy, Proceedings of InternationalConference 'Sustainable Tourism Development in Vietnam', 22-23May 1997, Hue: 1-4. Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism andHanns Siedel Foundation (Germany).