1 200 years of history unearthed in Vietnam
HANOI - Archaeologists in the Vietnamese capital city have excavated 17 000 square metres of a massive historic site, officials told reporters on Wednesday.
The state has already spent nearly $1,3-million (about R9-million) excavating the site and preserving the millions of artefacts that have been dug up since last December, said Professor Le Trung Tong, the head of Vietnam's Institute of Archaeology.
When the current phase of the excavation was at its peak, 1 400 labourers and between 70 and 100 experts were working on the site which is directly opposite the mausoleum containing the embalmed remains of communist Vietnam's founding father Ho Chi Minh. The archaeological site had been earmarked for the building of a new parliamentary building, but after initial wrangling whether the construction should go ahead or not, the government decided to excavate the site and preserve the ruins, which date from the seventh to the 19th century.
Palace foundations, wooden support pillars, ponds, water channels and wells have been revealed with the excavation.Ornate dragon and phoenix roof decorations, delicate ceramics, jewellery, weapons and at least six sets of human remains have also been uncovered. Four sets of human remains were buried together with their hands tied behind their backs. Another two sets of remains were children aged between eight and 12, Professor Tong said.
The government has given $1,9-million (R12-million) for the first stage of the excavation which is expected to be finished by the end of 2004, the professor said. Foreign journalists had been barred from visiting the site before Monday, and Hanoi is cautious about how to present Vietnam's pre-revolutionary past. Vietnam's communist government has said that the state-controlled media must toe the party line when reporting on the remains.
"The Central Committee for Ideology and Culture and the Ministry of Culture and Information must guide newspapers to launch objective and faithful articles regarding this issue," the state-run, Vietnamese-language news website Vietnam Net reported in early November.
SAPA/DPA (.za) - December 17, 2003
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