| Prehistoric cultures of Vietnam |
|---|
| Paleolithic Age |
| Sơn Vi Culture (20,000-12,000 BC) |
| Mesolithic Age |
| Hòa Bình Culture (12,000-10,000 BC) |
| Neolithic Age |
| Bắc Sơn Culture (10,000-8,000 BC) |
| Quỳnh Văn Culture (8,000-6,000 BC) |
| Đa Bút Culture (6,000-5,000 BC) |
| Bronze Age |
| Phùng Nguyên Culture (5,000-4,000 BC) |
| Đồng Đậu Culture (4,000-2,500 BC) |
| Gò Mun Culture (2,500-2,000 BC) |
| Iron Age |
| Đông Sơn Culture (2,000 BC-200 AD) |
| Sa Huỳnh Culture (1,000 BC-200 AD) |
| Óc Eo Culture (1-630 AD) |
The term Hoabinhian (Vietnamese: Văn hóa Hòa Bình) was first used by French archaeologists working in Northern Vietnam to describe Holocene period archaeological assemblages excavated from rock shelters. It has become a common term in the English based literature to describe stone artifact assemblages in Southeast Asia that contain flaked, cobble artifacts, dated to c. 10,000–2000 BCE.[1] The term was originally used to refer to a specific ethnic group, restricted to a limited time period with a distinctive subsistence economy and technology. More recent work (e.g. Shoocongdej 2000) uses the term to refer to artifacts and assemblages with certain formal characteristics.
Bacsonian is often regarded as a variation of the Hoabinhian industry characterized by a higher frequency of edge-grounded cobble artifacts compared to earlier Hoabinhian artifacts, dated to c. 8000–4000 BCE.[2][3]
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In 1927 Madeleine Colani published some details of her nine excavations on northern Vietnamese province of Hòa Bình. As a result of her work the First Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East in 1932 agreed to define the Hoabinhian as
Despite the general terms of the definition, Colani's Hoabinhian is an elaborate typology as indicated by the 82 artefacts from Sao Dong that Colani classified into 28 types (Matthews 1966). The original typology is so complicated that most Hoabinhian sites are identified simply by the presence of sumatraliths (White & Gorman 1979). The chronology of Hoabinhian artifacts was assumed to be Holocene because of the extant fauna found in the assemblages and the absence of extinct fauna by Colani and others working before the availability of radiocarbon dating methods in the 1950s.
Problems with Colani's typology were exposed by Matthews (1964) who analysed metric and technological attributes of unifacially flaked cobble artifacts from Hoabinhian levels at Sai Yok Rockshelter, Kanchanaburi Province, west-central Thailand. His aim was to determine if Hoabinhian artefact types described by Colani could be defined as clusters of constantly recurring attributes such as length, width, thickness, mass, length-width ratio and cortex amount and distribution. Matthews found that Hoabinhian types did not really exist and instead Hoabinhian artifacts reflect a continuous range of shapes and sizes.
Following his archaeological excavation and surveys in Mae Hong Son Province, northwest Thailand, Chester Gorman (1970) proposed a more detailed definition as follows
Gorman's work included a number of radiocarbon dates that confirmed the Holocene age of the Hoabinhian.
The term was redefined in 1994 by archaeologists attending a conference held in Hanoi. At this conference Vietnamese archaeologists presented evidence of Hoabinhian artifacts dating to 17,000 years before the present. A vote was held where is was agreed that [1]
Since the term was first used to describe assemblages from sites in Vietnam, many sites throughout mainland and island Southeast Asia have also been described as having Hoabinhian components. The apparent concentration of more than 120 Hoabinhian sites in Vietnam reflects intense research activities in this area rather the location of a centre of the prehistoric Hoabinhian activity. Archaeological sites in Sumatra, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia have been identified as Hoabinhian, although the quality and quantity of descriptions vary and the relative significance of the Hoabinhian component at these sites can be difficult to determine.
Beyond this core area some archaeologists argue that there are isolated inventories of stone artifacts displaying Hoabinhian elements in Nepal, South China, Taiwan and Australia (Moser 2001).
Gorman (1971) claimed that Spirit Cave included remains of Prunus (almond), Terminalia, Areca (betel), Vicia (broadbean) or Phaseolus, Pisum (pea) or Raphia Lagenaria (bottle gourd), Trapa (Chinese water chestnut), Piper (pepper), Madhuca (butternut), Canarium, Aleurites (candle nut), and Cucumis (a cucumber type) in layers dating to c. 9800-8500 BP. None of the recovered specimens differed from their wild phenotypes. He suggested that these may have been used as foods, condiments, stimulants, for lighting and that the leguminous plants in particular 'point to a very early use of domesticated plants' (Gorman 1969:672). He later wrote (1971:311) that 'Whether they are definitely early cultigens (see Yen n.d.:12) remains to be established... What is important, and what we can say definitely, is that the remains indicate the early, quite sophisticated use of particular species which are still culturally important in Southeast Asia.'
In 1972 W.G. Solheim, as the director of the project of which Spirit Cave was part, published an article in Scientific American discussing the finds from Spirit Cave. While Solheim noted that the specimens may 'merely be wild species gathered from the surrounding countryside', he claimed that the inhabitants at Spirit Cave had 'an advanced knowledge of horticulture'. Solheim's chronological chart suggests that 'incipient agriculture' began at about 20,000 B.C. in southeast Asia. He also suggests that ceramic technology was invented at 13,000 B.C. although Spirit Cave does not have ceramics until after 6800 B.C.
Although Solheim concludes that his reconstruction is 'largely hypothetical', his overstatement of the results of Gorman's excavation has led to inflated claims of Hoabinhian agriculture. These claims have detracted from the significance of Spirit Cave as a site with well-preserved evidence of human subsistence and palaeoenvironmental conditions during the Hoabinhian.