Japanese archaeologist Nishimura Masanari who died in an accident on the way to an archaeological site on June 9, was buried at Kim Lan commune's graveyard, Gia Lam district, Hanoi on June 13.

Kim Lan commune is the place the archaeologist established an ancient earthenware museum. The museum displays various objects and operating methods, the result of years of tireless work by Masanari.

The village people donated many artifacts they collected to the museum.

The Vietnam Institute of Archaeology has completed a dossier to submit to the Vietnam Institute of Social Sciences to bestow an award posthumously on Masanari for his devotion to Vietnamese archaeology.

Masanari was born in 1965 in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. He first came to Vietnam in 1990 for a project in the central province of Nghe An. He learned Vietnamese, understood Vietnamese culture and even adopted the name Ly Van Sy.

In November 1998, Nishimura discovered a piece of a mould used to cast bronze drums dating back 2300 years, the only one of its kind ever found. The object is an important piece of evidence for the research of Vietnamese bronze drums.

Both his postgraduate and doctorate theses were about Vietnamese archaeology and its ancient civilisations.-VNA