Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009) 84–89

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Journal of Archaeological Science

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas

Salt production in pre-Funan Vietnam: archaeomagnetic reorientation of

briquetage fragments
Ulrike Proske a, *, David Heslop a, b, Till J.J. Hanebuth a, b
a
Faculty of Geosciences, University of Bremen, P.O. Box 330440, 28344 Bremen, Germany
b
Research Centre Ocean Margins, University of Bremen, 28344 Bremen, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Bronze to Iron Age briquetage found in the northern Mekong Delta has an appearance similar to anal-
Received 12 March 2008 ogous material from Europe and Asia; however, the orientation in which the briquetage was employed
Received in revised form 14 July 2008 during the production of salt is still under debate. As a consequence of the heating and subsequent
Accepted 24 July 2008
cooling of the briquetage during the evaporative recovery of salt, the magnetic mineral particles within
the ceramic formed a stable thermoremanent magnetization in alignment with the Earth’s magnetic
Keywords:
field. It thus becomes possible to find the orientation in which the ceramics were last fired by aligning
Salt production
their recorded archaeomagnetic signal with estimates of the Earth’s ancient field direction in Vietnam.
Briquetage
Archaeomagnetism The archaeomagnetic directions obtained from 22 samples taken from five different briquetage artefacts
Vietnam are somewhat scattered, but they reveal a consistent orientation and thus the mode in which the bri-
quetage was employed can be reconstructed.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The Vietnamese archaeological site of Gò Ô Chùa is situated in
the north-eastern Mekong Delta, close to the border with Cambodia
(11000 N, 105 460 E; Long An province; Fig. 1). The site consists of
three northeast-southwest directed hilly structures that rise up to
4 m above the ground, which itself has an elevation of w1.8 m
above modern sea level. During the first excavation in 1997 and
subsequent campaigns a large quantity of pottery sherds and baked
material was found (Reinecke and Nguyen, 2008). The main portion
of the ceramic remains has been identified as briquetage (a term
that describes the pottery used for salt production). The briquetage
was recovered from cultural layers that have been radiocarbon
dated between 2900–2200 cal yrs BP, classifying the settlement as
late Bronze to early Iron Age (Reinecke and Nguyen, 2008). At the
present time this specific, briquetage producing culture from the
Mekong Delta has no formal name and is simply referred to here as
‘‘pre-Funan’’ (Funan: the first state established in the greater
Mekong Delta region in the early centuries AD (Higham, 2002)).
Briquetage from the Bronze and Iron Age has been identified at
a number of archaeological sites particularly in Europe. Large-scale
salt production in the Bronze Age was based on two main tech-
niques, the mining of stone salt, in the Hallstatt area of Austria for
example, or the refinement of brine gathered from saline springs,
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: uproske@uni-bremen.de (U. Proske).
for example in the Halle/Saale area of Germany and the Moselle
basin in France (Alexander, 1982). With the commencement of the
Iron Age the importance of these large inland salt-production
centres seems to have declined as a result of the establishment of
various coastal sites where salt was extracted from sea water
(Alexander, 1982). Many salt-production sites along the southern
and eastern coast of England have been dated to this period, with
larger complexes in Hampshire (Cunliffe, 1984), Essex (deBrisay,
1974), and Lincolnshire (Baker, 1974). Furthermore, sea salt
production is reported from the coasts of France (Tessier, 1974) and
Belgium (Thoen, 1974). In addition to these smaller, wide spread
coastal sites, new inland salt-production sites such as Haute Seille
in France and Schwaebisch Hall in Germany were also active during
the Iron Age (Olivier and Kovacik, 2006).
In contrast to this well documented European activity there are
few Bronze to Iron Age salt-production areas known in Asia.
Localized exploitation of brine springs including the heating of the
brine to drive evaporation is reported from Zhongba (central China)
where salt production during the Neolithic and Bronze Age was the
key to the development of the Upper Yangtze region (Flad et al.,
2005; Flad, 2007). Along the coast of the Yellow Sea settlers in the
region of Shandong were producing sea salt since the Late Shang
phase (1250–1046 BC) (Underhill et al., 2008). Furthermore,
ancient salt production including the heating of the brine is
described from various locations along the shores of Japan (Kondo,
1974). Hence, the discovery of Gò Ô Chùa and its identification as
a large-scale salt-production area is an important contribution to
our understanding of the history of salt production in Asia.

0305-4403/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jas.2008.07.012
 U. Proske et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009) 84–89 85

Fig. 2. Example of the briquetage found at Gò Ô Chùa. The pottery is approximately
25 cm high and 12 cm wide at the cup-shaped end.

briquetage’s orientation and thus to solve the debate concerning

Fig. 1. Location map of the archaeological site Gò Ô Chùa (labelled GÔC and marked the mode of salt manufacture at Gò Ô Chùa.
with a black arrow) within the Mekong Delta. For purposes of orientation, the smaller
inset map shows the Mekong Delta (black square) within Southeast Asia. Additional
labelling shows major rivers, Ho-Chi-Minh-City (HCMCity) and the Cambodian border, 2. Archaeomagnetic reorientation
in addition to the bordering seas.

When heated above their blocking temperatures and subse-

quently cooled, minerals such as magnetite and hematite form
The general briquetage found at European and Asian sites varies a thermoremanent magnetization (TRM), which is parallel to the
in both morphology and size, as do the forms and sizes of the ambient magnetic field (Merrill et al., 1998). In the case of fired
ceramics found at Gò Ô Chùa (Reinecke and Nguyen, 2008). The archaeological materials the ambient field is of course the Earth’s
most commonly found briquetage at Gò Ô Chùa has a pedestal form magnetic field and thus baked clays, which contain detrital
with an elongated stem of w25 cm in length, three finger-like
protrusions at one end, and a cup-shaped depression at the other
(Fig. 2). The pedestals from Europe and Asia vary in their appear-
ance and thus provide only a limited direct comparison. For
example, pedestals from the Red Hills of Essex have a splayed base
and a T-shaped top (Fawn et al., 1990) and pedestals from the Halle/
Saale area are flat on both sides and thus could be used either way
around (Kleinmann, 1974). In a similar manner the pedestals
described from Japanese salt producers are cup-shaped at both
ends and thus do not have a unique up-down orientation (Kondo,
1974).
As a result of the form of the Gò Ô Chùa briquetage and the
ambiguity in the analogous ceramics from Europe and Asia it
cannot be said with certainty in which orientation the pedestals
were employed during salt production. Currently there are two
possible modes of use that are discussed amongst the archaeolo-
gists actively working on the ceramic material. First, the briquetage
was oriented with the finger-like structures pointing upwards with
an additional vessel to hold the evaporating brine (Reinecke and
Nguyen, 2008). These vessels have not been found at the site but
historical and ethnographical sources suggest they may have been
manufactured from organic materials such as bamboo or coconut
shell, which was then covered with a fire resistant calcareous layer Fig. 3. Schematic of the geocentric axial dipole model. The dipole (M, thick arrow) is
(Reinecke and Nguyen, 2008). The second possibility is an orien- positioned at the centre of the Earth and aligned along the rotation axis (where N gives
the geographic north pole). The inclination is then a function of latitude, as shown by
tation of the briquetage with the cup-shaped end towards the top the thin arrows, which demonstrate the field direction for different points on the
and filled with brine (Nishimura, 2003). By adopting a novel Earth’s surface. The latitude (l) of the Gò Ô Chùa site is 11 N, which yields a positive
archaeomagnetic approach we are in a position to reconstruct the field inclination (I) of 21.
86 U. Proske et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009) 84–89
Fig. 4. Schematic cross-sections of the briquetage in the two possible orientations (A
and B) in which they could have been fired. The black, dashed arrows indicate the
direction of the ambient geomagnetic field. The lower schematics show the orientation
of the inclination determined with respect to the horizontal (H) and a vertical refer-
ence axis (REF) defined during sampling. If the briquetage was employed in orientation
A, the determined inclinations with respect to the REF axis will be positive, alterna-
tively negative inclinations with respect to the REF axis would imply firing in orien-
tation B.
particles of magnetite and hematite, can form a natural remanent
magnetization (NRM). This provides an archive of geomagnetic
information which is stable over extended periods of time.
The geocentric axial dipole (GAD) model serves as a basic, but
effective representation of the average state of the Earth’s magnetic
field at time scales longer than w10 kyr. The GAD field corresponds
to a dipole positioned at the centre of the Earth, which is aligned
with the Earth’s rotation axis (Merrill et al., 1998). Such a field is
symmetrical about the axis of the dipole and the inclination of the
field (I, the angle between the vertical component of the local field
and the horizontal, conventionally taken as positive downwards) is
simply a function of latitude (l):
tan I ¼ 2 tan l: (1)
Given this model, the GAD inclination for the Gò Ô Chùa site is þ21
(Fig. 3). Our proposition is therefore simple; the briquetage speci-
mens found at Gò Ô Chùa will have been heated during the salt
manufacturing process, thus they should have preserved a TRM
that at the time of heating was in alignment with the Earth’s
magnetic field. By quantifying the direction of the NRM recorded in
Fig. 5. Reconstructed palaeoinclinations from the CALS7K.2 global field model for the calibrated 2s radiocarbon age range of the Gò Ô Chùa site (2900–2200 cal yrs BP). The mean
model inclination during this time interval is 12  3.3 , which is shallower than the inclination of 21 expected for a geocentric axial dipole.
the briquetage it thus becomes possible to determine in which
orientation the specimens were last heated.
Our approach to this problem is represented graphically in Fig. 4,
where the NRM inclination will reveal the orientation of the bri-
quetage. A similar approach was adopted by Borradaile et al. (1999)
who investigated British briquetage with a known up-down
orientation to determine palaeoinclinations with which salt-
production activity in Iron Age Britain could be dated by reference
to a palaeosecular variation curve.
As discussed previously, the GAD represents only a time-aver-
aged approximation of the geomagnetic field and at any moment in
time the actual field may deviate significantly from this simplified
representation. The Earth’s magnetic field exhibits secular variation
in both direction and intensity, which may be caused by changes in
the position of the dipole axis and non-dipole contributions to the
field. Given the relatively low latitude of the Gò Ô Chùa site (11 N),
the proposed reorientation procedure could potentially be inva-
lided if the geomagnetic field at Gò Ô Chùa at the time the bri-
quetage samples were last fired was significantly different from the
field direction predicted by the GAD model.
The CALS7K field model was constructed from a global data-
base of archaeomagnetic and palaeomagnetic information that
describes the large-scale evolution (dipole moment and secular
variation) of the geomagnetic field since 7000 yrs BP (Korte and
Constable, 2005; Korte et al., 2005). Uncertainties in both
magnetic and chronological data were incorporated into the field
model, which interpolates spatially using spherical harmonics and
temporally using splines to estimate the field direction and
intensity for any location over the past seven millennia. Although
the coverage of archaeo- and palaeomagnetic data around Viet-
nam is sparse and the CALS7K model can only provide an inter-
polated estimate of the field, it is still the best available source of
information with which to identify deviations from a GAD field for
the Gò Ô Chùa site.
Analysis of the reconstructed palaeoinclination variation from
the CALS7K model (Fig. 5) using circular statistics (de Sa, 2003)
suggests that the mean inclination for Gò Ô Chùa in the period
2200–2900 yrs BP was þ12  3.3 . Although some difference exists
between the inclinations expected from the GAD and CALS7K
models, the values are both positive and an archaeomagnetic based
reorientation of the briquetage specimens should be possible. A
necessary caveat emptor of this approach is the possibility that
future palaeomagnetic studies will reveal the Earth’s magnetic field
was reversed (i.e. had a negative inclination) at Gò Ô Chùa during
the period of interest. Although there is currently no evidence to
support such a field configuration, the reinterpretation of this study
would be trivial with the determined orientation of the briquetage
simply being reversed.
 U. Proske et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009) 84–89 87

Table 1 and alternating field (AF) demagnetized progressively in 5 mT

Results of the archaeomagnetic reorientation analysis of the Gò Ô Chùa briquetage increments to 50 mT and then in 10 mT increments to a maximum
Sample name ChRM inclination [ ] ChRM MAD [ ] MDFNRM [mT] S-ratio field of 100 mT using the instrument’s inbuilt coil-system. Typical
A-1 20.7 1.1 27.3 0.97 NRM intensities were measured by the instrument as magnetic
A-2 20.1 1.0 24.0 0.98 moments of the order 105 A m2. AF demagnetization was selected
A-3 26.3 0.2 26.2 0.96 over thermal demagnetization because of the extremely fragile
A-4 20.0 0.3 25.4 0.99
nature of the samples.
B-1 20.8 0.2 54.3 0.83
B-2 16.7 0.3 51.9 0.88 Rock magnetic measurements were performed using a Princeton
C-1 1.5 0.5 52 0.82 Measurements Corporation M2900 alternating-gradient force
C-2 39.6 4.1 48.3 0.88 magnetometer in order to assess the magnetic mineralogy of the
D-1 16.9 1.0 31.2 0.94 individual briquetage samples. Small chips were taken from each of
D-2 21.0 0.6 47.4 0.80
D-3 5.2 0.6 48.6 0.79
the samples and used to measure isothermal remanent magneti-
D-4 9.4 1.3 65.8 0.81 zation (IRM) acquisition to a maximum field of 1 T and hysteresis
D-5 44.2 1.7 42.8 0.91 loops to peak fields of 1 T.
D-6 3.2 1.6 49.8 0.86
D-7 10.7 0.5 50.2 0.85
E-1 44.0 1.0 31.6 0.98 4. Results
E-2 56.1 1.7 31.5 0.99
E-3 61.5 0.3 30.3 0.96 The decay of NRM magnitude as a function of peak AF was found
E-4 7.7 3.4 29.3 0.97 to be inconsistent between the samples (Fig. 6a), with median
E-5 57.2 1.1 29.9 0.95
E-6 51.9 0.8 29.5 0.81
destructive fields (MDF, the peak AF required to reduce the NRM to
E-7 69.4 2.8 33.0 0.98 50% of its initial value) ranging from 29 to 66 mT. Given the MDF
values it is apparent that in the magnetically softer samples the
The prefix letter (A–E) in the name field specifies from which artefact a given
numbered sample was taken. From the NRM demagnetization data, ChRM inclina- NRM is most probably carried by magnetite with a distribution of
tion and MAD were determined using principle component analysis and the median grain sizes (Cui and Verosub, 1995).
destructive field of the NRM (MDFNRM) was obtained by linear interpolation. The S- Rock magnetic analysis of the briquetage specimens reveals the
ratio represents the relative contributions of magnetite and hematite to the IRM reason why some samples exhibit significantly harder demagneti-
acquisition of the samples.
zation behaviour with elevated MDFs. Magnetic hysteresis loops
measured to a maximum field of 1 T reveal a substantial variation in
3. Experimental procedures the magnetic mineralogy of the briquetage specimens. The majority
of the specimens have narrow shapes which are indicative of
Five briquetage fragments were available for sampling, which a magnetic mineral assemblage dominated by magnetite or
based on their sizes and shapes clearly originate from five maghemite (Fig. 7). In contrast, a smaller number of samples have
different artefacts. Unfortunately, the briquetage material was loops which are constricted about their middles and strongly
extremely fragile and attempts to consolidate and drill cores from ‘‘wasp-waisted’’ indicating a mixture of high coercivity hematite
the artefacts were unsuccessful. Instead, small sub-samples were and low coercivity magnetite (Roberts et al., 1995).
cut from the briquetage using a hacksaw. These sub-samples could To assess the influence of mixed magnetite/hematite miner-
only be orientated with respect to a predefined vertical axis, the alogy on NRM demagnetization a modified version of the S-ratio
REF line shown in Fig. 4, and they tended to be irregular in shape (Bloemendal et al., 1992) was calculated. The S-ratio provides
depending on where the material fractured. The orientated a measure of the relative contributions of magnetically hard
samples were rubbed gently with glass paper to remove any minerals such as hematite and magnetically soft minerals such as
possible surface contamination, mounted inside non-magnetic magnetite to the bulk properties of a sample. This is achieved by
plastic cubes and surrounded with paper to fix their orientation. In comparing the magnitude of the IRM formed in a low field (suffi-
total 22 sub-samples were taken from the five different artefacts cient to saturate the magnetite component, but with a minimal
(Table 1). influence on the hematite) and a high field (sufficient to create
Sample NRMs were measured using a 2G Enterprises 755R DC a remanence in the hematite with no further effect on the previ-
SQUID cryogenic magnetometer system (noise level w1012 A m2) ously saturated magnetite).

Fig. 6. (a) NRM magnitude, M, normalized by its initial value, M0, as a function of peak demagnetizing field for the 22 briquetage samples. The black line corresponds to the sample
whose demagnetization is plotted in the orthogonal plot in (b). The orthogonal plot reveals a univectorial remanence decaying towards the origin after the removal of a weak
viscous component. Solid and open symbols denote projections onto the horizontal and vertical planes, respectively, and numbers next to the data points represent the peak AF
values in mT.
88 U. Proske et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009) 84–89

Fig. 7. (a) Normalized hysteresis loops (divided by the saturation magnetization, Ms) for magnetite-rich (solid line) and hematite-rich briquetage (dashed line) samples; note the
strongly wasp-waisted form of the latter which is indicative of a mixed magnetic assemblage containing both low and high coercivity minerals. (b) Normalized IRM acquisition
(divided by the saturation IRM, SIRM) curves for the same samples as shown in the first panel, the low coercivity magnetite-rich sample (solid line) is almost saturated at a field of
0.1 T, in contrast the second sample (dashed line) shows a strong change in slope as the magnetite component saturates and acquisition commences in the hematite component.
Based on these observations a modified form of the S-ratio is calculated comparing the magnitudes of the remanences formed at 0.1 T (IRM0.1) and 0.3 T (IRM0.3).

The IRM acquisition curves of typical magnetite-rich and
hematite-rich briquetage samples show the shift from IRM
acquisition in magnetite to acquisition in hematite as a change in
slope at w0.1 T (Fig. 7b). Based on this observation the rema-
nences selected for the S-ratio determination were those formed
at 0.1 T (IRM0.1) and 0.3 T (IRM0.3). S-Ratios close to a value of 1
indicate a mineralogy dominated by magnetite and decreasing
numbers demonstrate an increasing contribution from hematite.
A plot of the S-ratio versus the MDF of the NRM reveals a statis-
tically significant negative correlation (Fig. 8), demonstrating that
as hematite abundance increases the NRM becomes harder to
demagnetize.
When displayed in orthogonal plots (Zijderveld, 1967), the
stepwise AF demagnetization procedure revealed that all of the
samples carried a small viscous remanent magnetization, which
was fully removed by the 20 mT treatment, Fig. 5b. Subsequent
demagnetization to higher fields yielded univectorial remanences
heading towards the origin, from which the characteristic rema-
nent magnetization (ChRM) and its maximum angular deviation
(MAD) could be quantified using principal component analysis
(Kirschvink, 1980). It is important to keep in mind that because the
samples were not orientated with respect to the horizontal, only
the inclination component of the recovered ChRM is meaningful.
The univectorial nature of the ChRM indicates that any rema-
nence formed during the manufacture of the briquetage, either
during natural drying or initial firing, has been erased by subse-
quent heating during routine use. Thus the ChRM direction corre-
sponds to the orientation of the briquetage artifacts with respect to
the field on the last occasion on which they were employed during
the salt-production process.
The ChRM inclination angles determined from the 22 samples of
briquetage are surprisingly scattered (Table 1 and Fig. 9), but do
reveal a consistent pattern with 21 normal directions and a single
reversed direction (considered to be simply part of the natural
dispersion). Using circular statistics (de Sa, 2003) it was found that
the mean inclination for all 22 samples is 27 with a standard
deviation of 21.6 . Given the very clear demagnetization charac-
teristics of the individual samples it is apparent that the dispersion
in inclinations does not originate simply from noise in the rema-
nence measurements. Intriguingly, a comparable archaeomagnetic
analysis of British briquetage also produced highly scattered indi-
vidual palaeoinclinations, but yielded a reasonable mean direction
over the sample set as a whole (Borradaile et al., 1999).
We believe that the scatter in the determined inclinations may
originate from a number of different sources, the first of which
stems from the difficulty in obtaining accurately orientated
samples from the briquetage, however, orientation errors are only
expected to be in the range of 5 . Second, shape effects due to the
irregular form of the individual samples will result in an inhomo-
geneity of magnetization within the measurement space of the
magnetometer. These shape effects are, however, expected to be
random within the sample set and therefore will only act to
increase the scatter of the measured directions without causing
a systematic offset in the mean inclination (Collinson, 1983).
Thirdly, anisotropy resulting from a preferred alignment of the
magnetic particles in the briquetage matrix can produce TRMs
which are not exactly parallel with the ambient field during heating
(Rogers et al., 1979). In a previous archaeomagnetic study of British
briquetage, magnetic anisotropy was considered to be a possible
cause of the large scatter in measured inclination values (Borradaile
et al., 1999). Finally it is to be expected that the briquetage artefacts
were not heated in a perfectly vertical orientation, for example due
to uneven ground (Borradaile et al., 1999).

5. Discussion and conclusions

Fig. 8. A comparison of the MDF of NRM to the calculated S-ratio values yields
a negative Spearman rank correlation (significant at the 0.001 level), revealing that the
hardness of the archaeomagnetic signal is controlled by the balance between A total of 21 out of 22 samples carried ChRMs with positive
magnetite and hematite in the individual briquetage samples. inclinations indicating that a robust reorientation analysis can be
 U. Proske et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (2009) 84–89
Fig. 9. (a) Expected field inclinations for the Gò Ô Chùa site based on a GAD (dashed
arrow) and the CALS7K field model (solid arrow with shading representing 1 circular
standard deviation). (b) Inclination values (circular symbols) obtained from the ChRM
determinations of the Gò Ô Chùa briquetage. Inclinations greater than 0 indicate that
the briquetage was employed in the orientation designated as ‘‘A’’ in Fig. 4, whilst
inclinations less than 0 would indicate orientation ‘‘B’’ was used. The mean inclination
of the sample set is given by the arrow (with shading representing 1 circular stan-
dard deviation), the length of the arrow representing the resultant magnitude of the
mean direction.
achieved even given the scatter in the values. To support this
suggestion we consider a hypothetical situation where the bri-
quetage specimens carry no meaningful directional information
and the chances of obtaining a positive or negative inclination from
a given sub-sample are identical. Under such a scenario the prob-
ability of obtaining 21 or more samples out of 22 which all showed
inclinations with the same sign is w0.001% (value derived from
a binomial distribution). Such a low probability indicates that our
data set must contain coherent directional information at least at
the level of the sign of the inclination (which is all that is necessary
to reconstruct the up-down orientation of the briquetage).
This mean inclination from the samples (27 ) is slightly steeper
than the values expected from a GAD (21 ) or the CALS7K field
model (12 ), but indicates clearly that the briquetage specimens
were last fired in an orientation similar to that shown as Orientation
A in Fig. 4. This orientation of the pedestals with the finger-like
protrusions to the top has been observed in the context of modern
salt production in Niger (Gouletquer, 1974) and thus seems to be
a convenient shape to employ in salt production.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Andreas Reinecke, the corresponding
archaeologist from the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Bonn for
the supply of briquetage and information. Furthermore we thank
Mr. Diem from the Archaeological Museum of Long An as our
partner archaeologist in Vietnam. We are grateful to two anony-
mous reviewers whose constructive comments helped to improve
the manuscript. This study is part of DFG project HA4317\2-1.
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