| This study is focused on the underpinnings of Vietnamese civilization in northern Vietnam's Red River Valley. Data were collected and analyzed through fieldwork excavations, laboratory analysis, and secondary research. The research examined the proto-urban site of Co Loa near modern-day Hanoi, believed to be the first capital of Vietnamese civilization. Though the site's monumental fortifications were purportedly constructed by an indigenously Vietnamese kingdom during the third century BC, this semi-historical claim is based on a mix of oral traditions, legend, and myth. Compounding the situation are extant Chinese Imperial Han textual records which suggest that, prior to Han colonization of Vietnam during the first centuries BC and AD, the Red River Delta area lacked social and political sophistication, being inhabited by local and indigenous "barbarians." Accordingly, the chronological reconstruction of the site's history provides critical new data for Vietnamese prehistory.;Field investigations at Co Loa secured stratigraphic, construction, cultural, and chronological data from a portion of its massive system of earthen rampart enclosures. The findings reveal that a local, indigenous, state-level polity emerged in the area during the third century BC, well before Han colonization. While far from proving the validity of Vietnamese oral accounts, the findings lend some support to the annals. In addition, the field research also revealed smaller fortification features buried beneath the rampart, a set of features belonging to a culturally distinct and smaller-scale society. These are the earliest fortification features to have been archaeologically detected within Vietnam, and the discovery hints at the possibility that pre-state communities in the area were engaging in periodic outbreaks of violence and warfare prior to political consolidation and state emergence.;The combination of data and analysis clearly suggests that the emergence of state-level, sociopolitical complexity was the result of a number of important factors, with coercion and warfare playing prominent roles. Accordingly, while contributing to early Vietnamese history, this study of the Co Loa case thus also holds vital significance for ongoing development of anthropological theories around social evolution and ancient state formation. |
