Most people pass the bottom of the Hai Van Pass without a second look. Under the scrub there are walls, moats and stone revetments that once guarded the northern approach to Da Nang Bay. As of this month, 88 objects from that ground are in the Da Nang Museum.

On the afternoon of October 5, the museum, the city's heritage and scenic sites management board and the Institute of Archaeology signed the handover of artifacts from an emergency excavation at the Chon Sang post and the Nam Chon station, VietnamPlus reported. The haul was 10 pieces from Chon Sang and 78 from Nam Chon, eight of them restored, along with the full scientific records.

What they dug up

The dig ran for 45 days from May 25, covering 600 square meters split evenly between the two sites, under a May 22 decision by the city's Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Finds included glazed ceramics, stoneware, fired-clay building materials and stone objects.

Both sites were key coastal defense posts of the Nguyen dynasty, controlling the north–south road and guarding the entrance to Da Nang Bay on the way to Hue, according to VietnamPlus. At Chon Sang, archaeologists found central building foundations. At Nam Chon, walls, moats and stone revetments suggest a planned layout, Bao Da Nang reported.

The layers

The interesting part is how much older some of it might be. Dr. Pham Van Trieu, head of historical archaeology at the Vietnam Institute of Archaeology, laid out a layered story at the handover, according to Bao Da Nang:

  • Some early traces may relate to the Tran dynasty and the era of Princess Huyen Tran.
  • A 17th-century group may be linked to "Chon Sang Tay," a place recorded by the scholar Le Quy Don.
  • 18th- and 19th-century items add evidence on Nguyen-era defenses.
  • Qing-era Chinese ceramics at Nam Chon point to trade along the Da Nang–Hoi An–Hue route.

The headline find is a sandstone relief from Chon Sang with what appears to be Cham script on the back. Experts tentatively date it to around the 8th or 9th century. Trieu said it would be the earliest Champa relief found so far in the former Da Nang area. "Tentatively" is doing real work in that sentence, and more study is planned.

Why it matters

The artifacts will support a dossier to rank Chon Sang and Nam Chon as city-level heritage sites. Museum director Huynh Dinh Quoc Thien said taking them in is a legal and professional duty to preserve material evidence of the Nguyen defense and post-station system, not a formality.

A heritage listing is one of the few tools that protects sites like these from future roadworks and development, including a Nguyen-era moat that has survived this long by being overlooked. Residents who care about that should watch for the ranking decision.

Sources

This story was compiled by the Da Nang Voice news desk from the published sources listed above. Facts, figures and quotes are attributed to those sources; Da Nang Voice did not conduct interviews for it unless the text says so. Corrections are dated and noted at the top of the story. Read our corrections policy. Spotted an error? Tell us.