Paper short abstract:

By the morphological study on the ear ornaments widely distributed around the South China Sea during Iron Age, it is examined the production systems for manufacturing. This method makes it possible to identify the cultural sphere and how the exchange and the communication took place in the ancient world.

Paper long abstract:

The lingling-o type ear ornaments which have three projections and the double-headed animal ear ornaments have been thought as the earrings of Sa Huynh Culture due to those artifacts have common features such as material (Nephrite), unique form and its concentration of distribution in Vietnam. Some research projects within morphological classifications and chemical analysis on those earrings have been succeed to reveal "maritime silk road" and "intra and inter-regional trading networks" around the South China Sea during Iron Age.

In this paper, targeting two kinds of ear ornaments unearthed from related sites from 500BC to AD100. By observing the production marks on the surface of earrings, it can be reconstruct the certain chain of manufacturing techniques. At the same time, the availability of materials in each sites (only macroscopic observations are used in this study) are considered to organize the production systems. As a result, the acceptances and the developments of two types of ear ornaments are different between each area, especially in Central and South Vietnam, while it has been treated as same cultural assemblage in former study. Discussing the production system in detail, it can be recognize the intra/inter-region and the cultural sphere and examine how the exchange and the communication took place around the South China Sea during Iron Age.