Franz Heger

Archaeology finds

Modern study of the bronze drum began only in the late 19th century, after Westerners reached the region. Heger had 22 actual drums in hand, plus the records and photographs of 143 others — 165 in all — and divided them into four types on the basis of shape, distribution, decoration and even alloy composition. Type I is the one he took to be the oldest, and it is this type that Vietnamese archaeology later gave another name: the Dong Son drum. The classification that both Vietnam and China still use today thus came from an outsider.¹

The other three types are simpler or later; Type II in particular turns up often in Muong areas and is therefore also called the Muong drum, while in the early 20th century many people called Type IV outright the Chinese drum, because it resembled the bronzes from over there. That naming sounds ordinary enough but is a move with weight behind it: Type I is named after a village in Thanh Hoa, while on the other side of the border drum types are likewise named after places in China — Wanjiaba, Shizhaishan, Beiliu, Lingshan. A name does not only name. It plants a flag.²¹