Recognition of Oc Eo Culture Relic in Thoai Son District an Giang Province, Vienam

Thoai Son, a rural district in Vietnam’s An Giang province, is home to Oc Eo town, the site of two important zones of archaeological relics; the Oc Eo Relic and the Ba The Relic, commonly grouped together as the Oc Eo - Ba The Relic. In addition, the Da Noi Relic is also located in Thoai Son District, where numerous gold items have been found. Excavations and studies conducted on the Oc Eo-Ba The Relic were introduced in the work of Louis Malleret “Archaeology of the Mekong Delta” published in years of 1959, 1960, 1962 and 1963. His work mainly introduced about artifacts, which were bought from the local people and very little about relics as he only excavated some archaeological sites. After 1975, the Oc Eo - Ba The and Da Noi Relic were introduced in the work of Le Xuan Diem et al “Oc Eo Culture Recent Discoveries” published in 1995. Their work mainly introduced about the relics and artifacts they excavated; however, they did not confirm the functions of the relics clearly or exactly as they claimed Da Noi Relic a tomb, but in fact it used to be a Hindu temple at early stage. Furthermore, the confirmation of the date of relics was only based on C14 method. Notwithstanding, thanks to Louis Malleret and Le Xuan Diem et al’s works and the two relics Go Cay Thi and Nam Linh Son remained to be external museum together with studies of artifacts kept in An Giang Museum, it is understandable about relics in this region. We had excavated at residential relic Go Tu Tram at the food of Ba The (Pad The) mountain twice by using stratigraphic method to find the date of the Oc Eo - Ba The Relics as well as we have excavated Go Thap Relic in Dong Thap province several times. Owing to case studies in Go Thap Relic, we have found numerous Hindu temples, residential relics and valuable artifacts. By studying artifacts in An Giang Museum, we can conduct a comparative study between Dong Thap Relic and Oc Eo - Ba The One, which helped us dating back Oc Eo Culture from the 2nd century BC to the early 7th century AD and post Oc Eo from the middle 7th century AD to the 12th century AD; furthermore, it is clearly confirmed about the functions of relics in this region, according to which they used to be Hindu temples; and numerous artifacts linked with the temples were named.