1. (Louise Cort, 10  July 2002)  According to Mrs. Tran Thi Thanh Dao, Museum of Vietnamese History, HCMC, this  type of pot is made by ethnic minority groups near Da Lat (Jarai, Sedang?).

2. (Louise Cort, 30  June 2003) Mr. Tran Ky  Phuong, independent researcher, Da Nang,  said he had never seen pots of this sort. They were definitely not by Katu  potters (ethnic minority group living in the mountains above the old Cham area  of Central Vietnam). Given the use of  vegetable sap to coat these pots, he wondered whether they were not the  products of Cham potters making products for trade to the minority groups. The  Cham potters in Tri Duc (Palay Gok),  Bac Binh, Binh Thuan province, apply hot resin to  their fired pots.

3. (Louise Cort, 14  July 2006) According to Dr. Lu Hung, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Hanoi, the  rounded formation of the base of this pot (rounder than the angular base on  some of the other pots in this group) suggests that it was made by Ede, Ma, or Ba Na ethnic potters. We visited potters from these ethnic  groups during our research trip to the Central Highlands in March.

4. (Louise Cort, 19  October 2006) A bowl approximating the size and shape of the "lid" of  this pot (h. 7 cm, diam. 10 cm) in the collection of the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris, collected before 1936 by Georges Devereux  from a Sedang community in Kon Tum province, Central Highlands, Vietnam (acc.  no. 71.1936.4.66), is identified in Sedang as a ‘tlah  taneh’ (clay bowl).

A bowl collected by Georges Condominas (acc. no. 71.1950.24.79, h. 9.5  cm, diam. 13 cm) from the Mnong Cil  village of Rlieng in Dac  Lac province is identified as a "ritual bowl" (kroo  coot = "bowl for taste of beer"). His notes state that the bowl can  serve as a measure for white (husked) rice, especially for the purpose of paying  a debt, but that the principal function is ritual, for mixing the lees of rice  wine and blood of the sacrificed animal and making the prayer of offering.  Condominas recorded the value of the bowl as one piaster—either a small glass  of salt or the bowl full of husked rice.

Condominas collected a second bowl (71.1951.3.291, h. 8 cm,  diam. 12 cm) that he traded for a packet of Vietnamese red dye with a Mnong Gar woman from Sar Luk village, Dak Lak province.

5. (Louise Cort, 19  October 2006) Three small Chinese jars in the Musée  du Quai Branly (acc. nos. 71.1968.2.173–175), all  collected by Daniel Leger from Bahnar Jolong communities in Kon Tum province,  Central Highlands, bear thick translucent coatings of brown "vegetal  resin" that obscure the glaze (and decoration, where present) and render  the color of the surface the color known locally as "dead leaf."  Those jars are used in annual invocations to the spirit of the waters. The use  of the vegetal coatings on such jars suggests that the coating on earthenware  cooking pots may not be limited to a functional purpose but may have ritual  meaning as well.

According to several different papers presented at the  European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeology biennial meeting in  September, the resins are obtained from various dipterocarps. In the vicinity  of My Son, the tree used is known locally (in Vietnamese) as ‘dau rai’.

6. (Louise Cort, 7  January 2007) Earthenware vessels of similar elongated "bag" form  were recovered in the Dai Lang cemetery, Lam Dong province, Vietnam. Two  from a grave that contained Chinese and northern Vietnamese ceramics datable to  14th–18th century are illustrated in Morimoto 1996, 110,  fig. 13). According to Ms. Morimoto (pers. comm., 13 October 2005), she was  told by staff at the Lam Dong Provincial Museum, where the artifacts are kept,  that bronze gongs and other local materials from the graves were associated  with the Ma, presently the dominant ethnic group in the vicinity of the  cemetery.

Morimoto Asako. 1996. "Chūbu  Betonamu, Ramudon-shō Dairan  iseki no tōjiki (Ceramics from the Dai Lang Site  in the Central Highlands of Vietnam)." Bōeki Tōji Kenkyū  [Trade Ceramics Studies] 16: 94–110 (Japanese), 129 (English summary).

7. (Louise Cort, 29  May 2007) The Binh Thuan Museum, Phan Thiet, owns a collection of earthenware  made by a K'ho potter in Dong Giang commune, Ham Thuan Bai  district, in 1998. They include cooking pots with similar lids that can also  serve as bowls, although the knob/foot is shaped with a footrim. The brown clay  is blackened on the outside where vegetal resin was splashed.

8. (Louise Cort, 7  October 2008) On our research trip to the Central Highlands together with Dr.  Luu Hung of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, in March 2006, we saw evidence for  the former widespread production of resin-blackened earthenware pots by various  ethnic groups living in the region, and it was not possible to determine with  certainty the precise source of these pots. However, as the information given  below indicates, S2005.196 most closely resembles (in form and decoration) pots  made by Mnong Gar and Ma potters, while S2005.197–202 resemble pots made by  Mnong Rlam, Ba Na, and Gia Rai (Jarai). The Mnong, Ba Na, and Ma are speakers  of Austroasiatic (Mon-Khmer) languages, while the Gia Rai are speakers of an  Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) language.

The Dak   Lak Museum,  Buon Me Thuot, exhibited black pots made by ethnic Mnong. The pots had clearly  marked shoulders and elongated necks. Some vessels were plain; others bore  elaborate decoration on the neck and upper shoulder made with fine incising (parallel  lines or hatching) or punctate patterns made by impressing comb teeth. The  tools displayed were a piece of cloth, long bamboo combs with four or five  teeth, two sizes of oval bamboo rings for scraping the wall, and two sizes of  smooth stones for polishing. In storage we saw another Mnong jar with elaborate  hatching and dotting patterns covering the elongated sloping neck; the vessel  walls were straight above a rounded base.

The Dak Lak museum also exhibited blackened pots made by Ede  Bih potters living along the Serepok (Ea Krong) River along the southern border  of Dak Lak province. One round pot about 30 cm high bore a band of seven  grooves around the neck beneath the everted and upturned rim. The repertory  also included plain round pots and hemispherical bowls, on pedestal feet or low  rims, said to used as lids as well. In storage we saw a clay steamer and a  long-necked round-bodied pot with two rows of incised designs (alternating  lengths of straight and zigzag lines) around the neck.

In storage, a small new pot with a lid collected from an Ede  Bih community (resembling S2005.202) was identified as being used to take food  to the field (pot h. 10.5 cm, diam. 12.0 cm; lid h. 5.0 cm, diam. 9.0 cm).

In Dak Lak Museum storage, we were shown five earthenware  pots and two earthenware bowls excavated from the tomb of Amaso, an important  man in the region in the nineteenth century (AMS 8621 etc). Other grave goods  includes brass and bronze bowls, cooking pots, and gongs. The clay pots bore  very fine linear designs on the rim only, not on the neck.

We saw demonstrations of pottery production by elderly Ede  Bih women in Buon Trap village, Krong Ana district. The pots were formed from  cylinders of clay on which additional clay was coiled; the rim was shaped with  a wet cloth, the walls were thinned with bamboo scrapers, and the surface was  polished with smooth stones. "Thirty years ago" these potters used to  send their pots to the market in Buon Trap, where they would exchange for  unhusked rice.

The senior woman in a home in a nearby Ede Bih community  said she had used clay pots for cooking "before 1960," but all her  pots had been broken, and she was using metal cans. In a home in Buon Trap, we  saw earthenware pots in use on the hearth for cooking regular rice (the pot was  called go hol bic, h. 13 cm), steaming sticky rice (go hol tie, h. 19 cm) with  a gourd steamer, and cooking vegetables, as well as a large pot formerly used  for dyeing thread (go bal, h. 30 cm). All the pots had single rows of designs  incised along the angled shoulder. They had been made twenty years earlier by  the eldest woman in the household (born 1921). The pots were blackened using  the liquid made from boiling bark from several varieties of forest trees. The  blackening "makes the pot look beautiful" and "makes it  durable." The designs had no meaning but were "to look  beautiful."

In a home in a Mnong Gar village, the repertory of  earthenware pots in use on the household hearth consisted of a small footed  bowl (h. 12 cm), a straight-sided steamer (h. 23 cm, diam. 14 cm), a plain  cooking pot with sharp shoulder, straight walls, and round base, and a  long-necked pots of the same shape (h. 20 cm, diam. 20 cm) with punctate and  hatched decoration on the neck beneath an everted rim (diam. 10 cm).

In the Mnong Rlam village of Bun Malieng Mot, Lak district,  we were shown a variety of pots, a steamer, and a pot (h. 20 cm, diam. 20 cm,  diam. mouth 10 cm) with a lid (h. 4 cm, diam. mouth 7.8 cm), called drap la,  from a village home. The lid was said to be too small to use as a bowl (krul).  (Bowls were the only form of ceramics for dining that we saw, and we were told  that bowls of various sizes also played roles in gifting and rituals for  weddings and at funerals.) The steamer for sticky rice (trom kul, h. 19 cm,  diam. 21.5 cm) had a hole in the center of the narrow base, blocked with a  section of loofah gourd. The steamer was set into the elongated ridged neck of  a large pot (h. 21 cm, diam. 23.5 cm); the total height of the ensemble was 34  cm. A plain pot with a short everted neck, close in overall shape to  S2005.197–201 (h. 20 cm), was termed gla. We were told pots used to be made in  this village, but all the women who had the skill had died or moved away.

In the market in Buon Me Thuat, red earthenware pots for  sale were said to have come from Binh Dinh province. Judging from the evidence  of technology, the potters were probably ethnic Kinh (Viet).

In the Lam Dong Provincial  Museum, Da Lat, we were told that  women of the Ma and Coho ethnic groups in the province used to make earthenware  but had ceased; now only the Chu Ru continued to produce it, in response to  local villagers' demands or for demonstrations in Hanoi  and Ho Chi Minh City.  The museum displayed Chu Ru earthenware, including large pots with sloping  shoulders bearing conspicuous vertical polishing and constricted necks, small  round plain pots, with or without lids, and footed bowls.

We saw a demonstration by Chu Ru women potters in the village of Krang Go, Don Duang district, who made  pots in two halves, first forming the upper half, then inverting it on its rim  and coiling on the lower half. Bamboo ring-shaped scrapers were used to thin  the walls and a large seed pod was used for burnishing the damp clay. The fired  pots were blackened in small bonfires made of leaves and brush.

The Lam Dong museum storage housed blackened earthenware  excavated in 1983 from the Dai Lang cemetery site, including jars with  carinated shoulders and dotted decoration around the neck, long-necked jars  with comb-impressed decoration around the shoulder, plain round pots, and  footed bowls. The datable Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Binh Dinh  "Cham," and Japanese ceramics from this site span the twelfth through  seventeenth centuries.

In a Ma home in Da Lat, we were shown earthenware pots of a  distinctive shape, with a hemispherical lower half and elongated sloping  shoulder, the shoulder and rim decorated with horizontal rows of punctate  decoration. A large pot (h. 22 cm, diam. 19 cm) also bore three evenly spaced  vertical punctate lines intersecting the horizontal lines. The term for vessels  was gla uk (gla = clay; uk =  pot).

In a Ma community in Loc Tan commune, Bao Lam district, we  were shown an old earthenware pot of shape similar to S2005.196, with high  angled shoulder and punctate lines defining the shoulder line, neck, and rim  (h. 17 cm, diam. 15 cm, diam. mouth 11 cm). The pot was used for cooking soup  or vegetables or steaming sticky rice. The design was called gao, but the  person who told us that did not know the meaning of the word. The production  process, as described only by an elderly woman, seemed to involve making the  bottom and top of a vessel separately, then joining them. The pattern was made  with the point of an all-purpose small knife. The largest pot she used to make  was about 40 cm tall.

The Kom   Tum Provincial   Museum storehouse housed  a wide-mouthed earthenware pot collected from a Xe Dang community (h. 23 cm,  diam. 24 cm; registration number BTKT 2959.1921). The sloping neck was  decorated with three bands of closely-spaced incised vertical lines, and groups  of three clay bosses were applied at three places above a band of three  horizontal lines marking the shoulder. Other Xe Dang pots in the collection  bore similar decoration, featuring the small clay bosses. The vessel name was  ko loe t'ne.

A woman of Ba Na ethnicity in Kon Xom Luh village, Kon Ray  district, Kom Tum province, Mrs. Y Ber (age 54), makes blackened pots quite  close in form to S2005.197–201. She coils and scrapes the vessel form upright  on a flat base, polishes the surface with a river pebble, then (after the pot  has dried overnight) pushes the base out to round it. She blackens the fired  pot inside and out with a solution made from the boiled bark of the t'nung  tree, "to make the pot durable" (k'jap). Her pots are undecorated.  One used pot on her kitchen shelf measured h. 24 cm diam. 23 cm diam. mouth 20  cm; a second pot measured h. 21 cm, diam. 21 cm diam. mouth 17 cm. She also  made small looted bowls (h. 7 cm, diam. 15 cm).

The Gia Rai provincial Museum had collected a group of seven  pots from a Jarai community (heights 15–27.5 cm, registration numbers KKBD  514/7–3 S:10/7–3). The museum records did not show clearly whether the family  that had owned the pots had made them. The vessel shapes were similar to the Ba  Na pots and to two pots identified as Gia Rai in the Kon Tum Provincial Museum.  Another large earthenware pot, undecorated, measured h. 28 cm, diam. 39 cm.  (707 S:35).