ANCIENT VIETNAMESE PEOPLE IN ĐÔNG SƠN CULTURE AND THE SEA

Abstract

As a peninsular Southeast Asian country with an extensive maritime domain, Vietnam has, since thousands of years ago, regarded the sea as a vital living environment, a space of subsistence, and a gateway for economic and cultural interaction among its ethnic communities. Throughout their formation and development, Đông Sơn cultural communities established settlements across broad and diverse landscapes. They demonstrated remarkable adaptability, exploiting natural resources and creating distinctive cultural expressions within multiple ecological zones. Consequently, alongside Đông Sơn cultural traditions associated with mountainous and highland regions, as well as those of river basins and deltas, there emerged a distinct coastal tradition-here conceptualized as maritime Đông Sơn culture. Drawing upon a wide range of historical sources and integrating archaeological and anthropological research and discoveries, this paper analyzes and elucidates maritime imprintswithin Đông Sơn culture. It further advances perspectives on the maritime character, the role of the sea, and the sea-oriented worldview of Đông Sơn communities, situating them within one of the major cultural epochs in the history of Vietnam and Asia.