BANGKOK
Bronze Age artifacts that shed light on the ancient Dong Son culture of southeast Asia have been discovered in Laos by villagers searching for unexploded bombs to sell as scrap metal, local media reported Thursday.
One of the items, a huge drum, has already been put on display in the capital, the Vientiane Times said.
Dong Son, a culture that existed around modern-day north Vietnam between 1000 B.C. and 1 A.D., was a distinctive civilization skilled in casting bronze that was eventually assimilated into the Han empire.
Their decorated bronze drums, which can be up to 2 meters tall, were traded and prized throughout the region. The drums typically show scenes of daily life or battles.
The villagers, who regularly search from ordnance left over from the Vietnam War to sell as scrap, also found copper ingots, jewellery and ceremonial items. The site of the find was not disclosed other than to say it was in southern Laos.
News of the discovery came as the U.S. handed back more than 500 antiquities looted from Thailand, mostly during the war, when U.S. troops were based in the country.
The items – largely 4,000-year-old pottery pieces from Ban Chiang, a UNESCO world heritage site in northeastern Thailand, as well as bronze tools, ornaments, weapons and beaded items – were seized by U.S. authorities from private muesums.
U.S. diplomats handed over the artifacts at a ceremony at the National Museum in Bangkok on Wednesday.
Charge d’affaires Patrick Murphy said halting the trade in ancient artifacts was a priority.
“Over the past seven years, nearly 7,000 cultural artifacts have been returned to 30 countries around the world,” he said. “It is a very good news that Thailand joins these countries. The artifacts should have never left the country.”
Between the mid-1960s and 1975, U.S. service personnel passing through Thailand returned home with many Thai antiquities dating back millenia.
In perhaps the most famous example of looting, a 1,000-year-old lintel was taken from Prasat Hin Phanom Rung, a pre-Angkorian Khmer temple in northeastern Thailand.
The lintel was spotted in 1976 by a Thai archaeologist at the Art Institute of Chicago and the theft prompted an anti-American campaign in Thailand, including the launch of a pop song titled “Take back Michael Jackson and bring us back the lintel of Narai.” The lintel was returned to Thailand in 1989.
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