Archaeological Evidence and Ethnographic Continuities in Southeast Asian Sound‑Making: Insights from Vietnamese Slit Drums

Fredeliza Campos1*, Philip Piper2, Lâm Thị Mỹ Dung3, and Nguyễn Ngọc Quý4

1School of Humanities, University of Sydney, Australia; 2School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Australia; 3University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Vietnam; 4Institute of Archaeology, Vietnam; *fredeliza.campos@aol.com

Across Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, slit drums represent a long-standing idiophonic tradition. They are well-documented in Vietnam’s ethnographic record where they are often used in signalling, ritual, and agricultural contexts, particularly among the Êđê, Jarai, and Bahnar communities from the Central Highlands and Mường from the northern uplands. Generally termed as trống rãnh, the Vietnamese slit drums are typically crafted from bamboo or carved from a single hardwood and hollowed internally to create a resonating chamber. The discovery of a possible bone slit drum at the Vườn Chuối archaeological site offers a rare insight into early sound-making practices in the region and represent a previously undocumented material variant of this musical instrument. This paper presents preliminary analysis and provides a crucial point of comparison for understanding the technological and acoustic preferences of early societies and invites a reassessment of how sound and materiality intersected in the musical landscape of the Indo-Pacific region.