Direct, indirect questionable archaeological evidence for silk in Vietnam

Archaeological evidence for silk was first discovered in Indochina almost a century ago during investigations of the eponymous /dong Son site, an Iron Age site excavated initially by Pajot in 1924 and Janse from 1937-9 (Janse 1947-1958). The Dongson culture (c.500BC-100CE) is better known for its magnificent bronze drums but while most Dongson drum sites were concentrated in the Red River delta and the valleys of the Ma and Ca Rivers (Figure 1) with a few isolated finds in island Southeast Asia (Calo 2014) sites containing regional variants are also distributed in LIngnan (Giuanxi and Guangdong provinces) (Chiang Ting You 1982). In Chinese historical sources, the groups who occupied territories south of the Yangzi were known collectivley as the Hundred Yueh wheras the groups distinguished by bronze drums in Lingnan were known as the Southern Yueh. Recently, i has been proposed that those groups who traditionally occupied the territories between the Han and Red Rivers at the begging of the first millennium were the LI and Liao (Churchman 2011). Certainly, the elites buried on the Red River plains and the Ma and CA river valleys lived on the margins of the late warring states, Qin and Han polities of early China (Higham 2002)