The Spirit of Phù Đổng and Anti-Folk Stories
I’ve been engaged in a long discussion on Facebook about, among other things, the story of a Vietnamese spirit in Phù Đổng village known in as Saint Gióng (Thánh Gióng)…
Oral Traditions on Borneo and in the Red River Delta
I’ve been having a long (and very productive) discussion with someone about an early Vietnamese text – the 15th-century – Lĩnh Nam chích quái liệt truyện (the Arrayed Tales of…
Romantic Nationalism in 1950s North Vietnam
A friend recently pointed out to me that there is an article that North Vietnamese historian Trần Huy Liệu wrote in 1956 that more or less set the guidelines by…
Texts, Archaeological Evidence and Vague Language
I’m reading a book on the emergence of “early states” (nhà nước sơ khai) in the Red River Delta. This book claims to be based on archaeological evidence, but what…
Early History and Multidisciplinary Scholarship in Vietnam
Several decades ago in North America it was common for archaeologists to use historical texts to interpret and explain their findings. Then archaeologists started to realize that many historical texts…