1. Overview of the site and the excavation
In June 2014, while carrying out the VASS-level research project called Study the system of the Stone Age archaeological sites in the upper area of Ba river, Gia Lai province, researchers of the Institute of Archaeology found 5 Palaeolithic sites in An Khe town, Gia Lai province. In late 2014, these sites were examined and introduced into the International Cooperation Program to study the erstwhile past of Vietnam that was done by the Institute of Archaeology (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) and the Novosibirsk Institute of Archaeology-Ethnography (Russian Academy of Sciences) for the period from 2015 through 2019.
In November 2015, the Go Da site was excavated for the first time. In March 2016, the excavation in Go Da was expanded to newly explore the Roc Tung site, in accordance with the excavation permit stated in Decision No.694/QD-BVHTTDL of the Minister of Culture-Sports and Tourism, dated March 3rd 2016.
Beside excavating the two above-mentioned sites, in 2016, the Vietnamese-Russian archaeologists examined and reached new discoveries of some Palaeolithic sites in An Khe. By now, the excavation has just completed, the archaeologists are processing and studying the materials collected to produce a scientific report. Below, we would like to introduce some preliminary results of the 2016 archaeological study in An Khe.
2. Excavation of Go Da site
The Go Da site in An Binh precinct, An Khe town is located at the latitude of N.13058’19,2” and longitude of E.1080 39’05,1”, at the height of 421.5 meters above the sea level, along the right bank of Ba river and about 1.5 km away from the Ba river’s bank. In 2015, the site was excavated with the area of 20m2, in 2016 four trenches were excavated with the total area of 74m2.
Excavation trenches have the same layer structure. The layer with traces of prehistoric people below the cultivation land and above the natural land layer is 10cm - 25cm thick on average. The land at the cultural layer is type of eluvium weathered from granite mixed with pebble grit, quartz, laterized and diluvium in some places. In general, the cultural layer here is preserved rather intact.
In these excavation trenches, 58 stone objects were found, including: 9 picks, 5 choppers, 9 scrapers, 2 hammer stones, 6 flaked tools, 3 amorphous cored tools, 12 flakes and 12 stone cores. Most of these tools were made of quartz; typically the choppers were made of the crude big pebble, the big picks were made of quartz cores, the scrapers were made of small flakes. Here, 21 tektite pieces were also found distributed in the cultural layer containing stone tools. This means, tektite pieces fell from the space down here when the cultural layer was being formed.
3. Excavation of Roc Tung site
In the Roc Tung site in Xuan An commune, An Khe town, so far 12 locations were found. In 2016, the archeology research group excavated 2 locations in Roc Tung, namely Roc Tung 1 (with the area of 48m2) and Roc Tung 4 (with the area of 20m2). These two locations are located on the same hill, of which Roc Tung 1 is at the latitude of N. 14002’15,2” and longitude of E. 108040’49,9”, Roc Tung 4 is at the latitude of N. 14002’2,7” and longitude of E.108040’35,7” and at the height of 440 meters above the sea level, along the left bank of Ba river and about 2.5km away from the bank.
The cultural layers at Roc Tung 1 and Roc Tung 4 are the same of the average depth of 30-35cm and being preserved intact. Basically, the strata structure in Roc Tung is quite similar to that in Go Da site, the difference is that in the layer containing stone artifacts in Go Da is mixed with more quartz grits while in Roc Tung it is richer in clay eluvium weathered from granite.
In Roc Tung 1 excavation trench, 46 stone artifacts were found including 7 picks, 1 unifacial tool, 2 scrapers, 1 chopper, 18 worked pebble pieces, 13 stone cores and 4 flakes. In Roc Tung 4, 77 stone artifacts were found including 1 pick, 4 scrapers, 1 hammer stone, 1 chopper, 14 stone cores, 23 flakes and 33 worked stone pieces. In the Roc Tung 1 location, there are also 102 tektite fragments, in Roc Tung 4 site, there are 25 tektite fragments found in the layer containing the stone tools.
4. New discoveries
During the excavation time in 2016, the research group also took surveys at a number of sites, which have been known, such as Roc Huong, Roc Giao, Roc Lon and Go Da, and newly discovered Roc Nep (in Cuu An commune). These surveys newly found 2 handaxes at Roc Giao and Roc Lon sites. Together with the 2 handaxes previously found in Roc Tung and Go Da, by now, the collection contains 4 handaxes, which are very typical of the Early Palaeolithic handaxes in the world.
Remarkably, so far the research group found 11 Early Palaeolithic locations located around Roc Tung area, they gather to make a complex of sites in the valley of Xuan An commune, An Khe town.
5. Preliminary scientific evaluation
5.1. About the site characteristics
These are the sites of residence and places of making stone tools of primitive man. The only cultural relics remained in the cultural layer is the stone tool made and used by human. The noticeable and important natural relics in identifying the age of the cultural relics here is the tektite fragments falling down from the space to the earth. No human or animal relics have yet been found because these sites are located in the open air, therefore, the organic materials have been already destroyed throughout the very long period.
On the surface of the cultural layer of Roc Tung 1, there are a lot of quartz fragments and river pebbles, consisting of stone tools and tektite fragments. That is likely the architectural plane of a residential place of primitive man that was raised up to avoid muddy in rainy season. To examine this assumption, in the coming time, it needs to expand the excavation area to collect more evidence.
5.2. About the stone-tool industry
The collection of stone tools found at the excavated sites have the following features:
The stone tools were made of quartz, quartzite or silicon sediment river/stream pebbles with the poor worn shapes.
The chopper - chopping tools were simply made by direct striking with large size take the major part in the collection. Some crude flaked tools (scrapers, cutting tools) and stone cores show that there existed the techniques of splitting flakes from big stones and using flaked tools but not yet popular.
The typical tools are large trihedral picks (triangle shaped cross-section) and unifacial tools.
Most noticeably, the collection of stone tools has bifacial tools, especially handaxes, which were made with a high level of techniques and beautiful look, typical of handaxes in the utmost antiquity of mankind – type of Acheulean handaxe in the early palaeolithic period in the world.
The An Khe stone tool assemblage has the characteristics of a technical complex: chopper – chopping tools / trihedral picks / bifaces – handaxes, in which chopper-chopping tools are typical of Asia, bifaces – handaxes are typical of the Western and trihedral picks only found in An Khe. The collection of stone tools in An Khe is different and older than the currently known collection of the early palaeolithic tools in Vietnam, i.e. Nui Do (Thanh Hoa) and Xuan Loc (Dong Nai), and at the same time similar to the collection of the early palaeolithic tools in Baise, Guangxi, China with an OSL date of 800 thousand years BP.
5.3. The date and owner of An Khe palaeolithic industry
For the absolute date, we should wait for the analysis results by the optically stimulated luminescence method (OSL) and analyze the date of tektites here. Currently, Vietnamese-Russian experts rely on the following bases to predict the date of the site complex in An Khe: (1) An Khe archaeological sites lie on the oldest layer of the Ba river with the dating from the early Pleistocene (QI3), around 1 million years BP; (2) the date of tektites falling down to the earth is the date of the site. Vietnam tektites belong to the Australia – Indochina strewnfield and have the date around 770-800 thousand years. Currently, over 20 tektite samples in Vietnam have been dated, in which the tektite samples in the old layer of the Ba river in Cheo Reo and the layer in An Khe have the date of 770 thousand years. Thus, the date of stone artifacts from An Khe is at least the same or even older.
On the other hand, when comparing the typology of stone tools in An Khe with several other early sites in Korea, India and China, members in the excavation/research team think that the stone artifacts discovered in An Khe are even older. The stone artifacts and its date of An Khe sites is corresponding with the Homo erectus period, one of the direct ancestors of Homo sapiens in the world.
5.4. Historical - cultural value of An Khe palaeolithic sites
Discoveries of the early palaeolithic sites in An Khe are evidence that the upper Ba river in An Khe is the residential area of the prehistoric community around 800 thousand years BP. This is temporarily the oldest currently known starting point about the appearance of human and their cultural relics in Vietnam’s territory.
For a long time, due to the lack of archaeological evidence, there existed contradictory views between the Eastern and the Western culture, in which handaxes appeared early in the Western, demonstrating the advance, self-motivation of people, while the Eastern preserved the chopper tool tradition, demonstrating the conservative, sluggish, backward nature and had almost no contribution to the mankind. Discoveries of bifacial tools and handaxes in An Khe not only reject this erroneous view but also supply new documentation to the distribution map of the appearance and evolution of human in the world.
The excavation is still undergoing but the preliminary collected documents have important value for the compilation of the national history and for exhibition at museums, aiming towards developing An Khe into a national and international study center for the history of human culture, practically contributing to the socio-economic development program in the Central Highlands in general and An Khe in particular.
In March 2017, the excavation will come back to An Khe to study the early palaeolithic archaeological sites in this area and hope that there will be more new discoveries.
Below are some pictures from the excavation:
