3. IAN GLOVER, Institute of Archaeology, UCL.

Dr. Glover recently conducted excavations between February and March, 1993 at Bui Chau hill, locally known as the "citadel" of the former Cham capital of Tra Kieu (ancient Simapura) in the Tubon Valley of Central Vietnam. The general aim of the project is to investigate the relationship between the late prehistoric Iron Age Sa-Huynh Culture and the Indianized Cham Civilization of the early centuries of the Christian era. Excavations at Bui Chau Hill, Tra Kieu primarily yielded large quantities of pottery, broken bricks and roof tiles, in addition to an intact brick floor, a line of boulders (provisionally interpreted as part of early terracing of the steep slope of the Bui Chau hill), and other artifacts found only in small numbers (for example, beads, glass, bronze pieces, and iron socketed tool). The following interpretation of the sequence is quoted from Report to the British Academy's Committee for South-East Asian Studies on archaeological fieldwork in Vietnam, 1993 which Dr. Glover sent for summary inclusion.

"Before we get radiocarbon dates for the lower part of the sequence, and study the pottery and other finds in some detail, it is difficult at present to offer much in the way of interpretation of excavated sequence. Cham archaeology, other than the study of sculpture, standing buildings and inscriptions is still little known and only Nguyen Chieu has excavated and published (in Vietnamese) a small body of material comparable to that found by us at Tra Kieu. However, it seems clear form the abundant pottery, brick and tiles, and absence of dressed stone and fragments of statuary that we were excavating on a secular settlement site, or at least among ancient buildings other than temples, of which the French archaeologists Parmentier, Maspero and Claeys identified, and the latter partly excavated many on the Bui Chau hill at Tra Kieu between 1918 and the 1930s. many of their finds of stone statuary, altar bases, Siva lingam and yoni stones are the principal ornaments of the Cham Museum at Danang, and finds of these are still commonly made by the villagers of the different hamlets at Tra Kieu. A fine 11th century apsara was found during agricultural work only a few hundred metres from our excavation trench while we were at Tra Kiue.

Despite the find of the possible Indo-Roman sherd near the base of the trench it is my present estimate that our sequence does not start earlier than about 6th-7th Century AD, and continues up to at least the 17th-18th Centuries, although there is very little material which can be dated so late and that is all in the disturbed garden soil and recent pits. It also seems that the bulk of the finds might belong to the 9th-12th centuries which is probably the time when the Cham Kingdom of Simapura was at the height of its power and was able to raid, and temporarily subjugate parts of the Dai Viet states of the Red River Delta, and also sack Angkor in Cambodia.

Whether or not we have a clear ceramic link with the Sa-Huynh culture is not clear to me at the moment... Only accurate dating and more analysis of the body of ceramic evidence will help us resolve this question" (p.4).