RECENT PHD AND MA THESES

4. RUTH PRIOR 2000. Early Historic Ceramics from Tra Kieu, Central Viet Nam: Typological and Petrographic Characterisation. PhD Thesis. Institute of Archaeology, University College London.

Abstract: This thesis focuses on the study of ceramic material, primarily pottery, from the site of Tra Kieu in the Thu Bon river valley, central Viet Nam. The pottery, from four excavation seasons between 1990 and 1997, has been recorded and sampled in Viet Nam for fabric analysis.

Tra Kieu was a centre of the polity known to the Chinese as Lin-yi, perhaps from the 2nd, and certainly from the 7th century AD onwards and a little later it is known as a major centre of the Indianised Champa kingdom.

According to radiocarbon dates, the pottery studied in this work dates between approximately the 2nd century BC and the 4th century AD. Thus, prior to the main development of the Cham state. This gives the assemblage especial importance, lying as it does between the disappearance of the late Iron Age Sa Huynh culture and the emergence of the Cham. The thesis explores the social and economic impulses behind this transition and how these are reflected in the ceramic assemblage.

The pottery was studied in extensive detail, making it an important data set for a collection of pottery little known and even less published either in Vietnamese or any European language. The analysis concentrates first on the chronological and typological ordering of the vessel forms and decoration. Later the fabrics are characterised using thin section analysis, placing particular emphasis on detailing the fine grained clay matrix, rather than the non-plastic inclusions, in an attempt to isolate the workings of individual production centres.

With the vessels and their fabrics described in detailed it was then possible to apply the information to the historical context of the region and attempt to understand the organisation of ceramic production within the Thu Bon valley.