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The archaeology of the Philippines is the study of past societies in the territory of the modern Republic of the Philippines, an island country in Southeast Asia, through material culture.
The history of the Philippines focuses on Spanish colonialism and how the Philippines became independent from both Spain and the United States. During the colonial times in the Philippines archaeology was not used as it is today, it mainly focused on ethnographic and linguistic studies. Archaeology was influenced greatly by H. Otley Beyer who taught anthropology in the Philippines in 1914. Beyer's teachings in the Philippines gained many students to follow in his footsteps into the field of archaeology.
After the Philippines gained their independence from America in 1946, many students of Beyer practiced archaeology all over the Philippines. A few of Beyer's students and colleagues who worked around the Philippines are Robert B. Fox, Alfredo Evangelista, and F. Landa Jocano. Their contributions helped the Philippines archaeology grow stronger when analyzing artifacts and archaeological sites.
There are many prominent sites throughout the Philippines, and some famous discoveries that were found date back to various time periods. A few well known site in the Philippines are the Rizal Archaeological Site in Kalinga, Tabon Caves, Lapuz Lapuz Cave, and Singhapala. Additionally, some famous artifacts found in the Philippines are the Callao Man, Tabon Man, Kabayan Mummies of Benguet.
Very little archaeological work was carried out in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period, even though the Spaniards were interested in the people of the islands from an ethnographic and linguistic perspective. Explorers such as Fedor Jagor, Joseph Montano and Paul Ray, and Jose Rizal, occasionally reported visiting sites, but the only detailed investigation was carried out by French archaeologist Alfred Marche in 1881. Commissioned by the French government, Marche conducted systematic surveys of burial caves on two islands, accumulating a large collection of antiquities which is now held in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. [1]
The most influential early figure in the archaeology of the Philippines was American anthropologist H. Otley Beyer. Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States in 1898, and the American colonial administration actively encouraged the anthropological study of the archipelago. Beyer was therefore invited to establish the University of the Philippines' anthropology department in 1914.
Early surveys and collections were carried out in the 1920s by Beyer, Dean C. Worcester, and Carl Guthe. Various private collectors and amateur archaeologists also accumulated significant amounts of material, but Beyer lamented that "none of this work was very scientifically done". [1]
The first major archaeological project in the Philippines was the Rizal-Bulacan Archaeological Survey (1926–1930), prompted by the discovery of finds during the construction of the Novaliches Dam in Rizal Province. Beyer opened substantial excavations in the area of the dam, employing up to seventy workers a day for six months. He also conducted a five-year survey of the surrounding area, cataloguing 120 sites and nearly 500,000 artefacts. In 1932, Beyer assisted F. G. Roth in beginning a second major project, the Batangas Archaeological Survey, which involved surveys and excavation in the Cuenca region. He also collected material from a number of localities around the islands throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. [1]
American colonial archaeology in the Philippines came to an end in 1941 when the islands were occupied by the Japanese. Beyer was interned by the occupying forces, although he was allowed to continue his work at the university. During this time he compiled two synoptic papers, 'Outline review of Philippine archaeology by islands and provinces' (1947) and Philippine and East Asian Archaeology (1948), which laid the foundation for subsequent Philippine archaeology. [1]
The Philippines gained independence from the United States in the 1946, but Beyer continued at his post at the University of Philippines until 1954. [1] In 1949, he was joined by Wilhelm Solheim, who was known in the Philippines for finding various pottery at different archaeological sites. In the 1960s, Robert B. Fox did archaeological work in the Philippines and is most famous for his research in the Tabon Caves. [2] In 1965, Fox had found a pot from the late Neolithic Period called the Yawning Jarlet at his time at the Tabon Caves. [3]
Alfredo E. Evangelista was a student of Beyer, Solheim and Fox and had instantly fell in love with archaeology. In 1956, worked with Robert Fox excavating the Bato Caves in the Sorsogon Province and later on they would excavate along the coast of Cagraray and Bikol.
One of Evangelista's famous discovery in the Philippines was the excavation in 1957 of a neolithic jar burial site in Nueva Ecija in Luzon. In 1960 he began to work with Robert Fox and Ray Santiago for the National Museum of the Philippines. [4] From the 1970s to early 1990s, Evangelista then began to work at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City and again later at the National Museum of the Philippines in Manila. [2]
In 1960, Alfredo Evangelista and F. Landa Jocano worked together and discovered the Oton death mask in San Antonio, Oton, Iloilo. Like Evangelista, Jocano he worked at the National Museum of the Philippines as well as the University of the Philippines. Inspired by Fox and Beyer, Jocano brought New World terminology by using previous data to the prehistory of the Philippines.
After Evangelista retired from the National Museum of the Philippines in 1992 Jesus T. Peralta became the Director III. Prior to becoming Director III, he was part of the Archaeology Division at the National Museum of the Philippines in 1988. [2]
Karl L. Hutterer, who studied under Solheim, became an influence to Philippine archaeology. Hutterer taught students the socioeconomic and political complexity of doing research in the field of archaeology. [2] When showing the socioeconomic processes to students, he focused on showing the diversity with the various cultures around areas. An artifact that Hutterer has examined in a geometric stone tools. [5]
In the late 1970s, William A. Longacre went to northern Luzon to do research on enthoarchaeology in the Kallinga region. He later furthered his research in southern Luzon, studying how earthenware potteries were made. An artifact that Longacre help discover and date was the Calatagan Pot with inscription. [2] In 1992, he contributed dating the pot with an accelerated mass spectroscopy, but failed to gather sufficient data. [6] He later suggested using a different form of dating C-14 technique to get an accurate date of the inscription. [2]
Before the 1980s, archaeology in the Philippines focused more on culture and history. The main way that archaeologists studied archaeology was using an inductive approach. When searching for artifacts the National Museum focused on collecting prehistoric remains. [2]
Although some 20th century historians believed that the various cultures of the Philippine archipelago first encountered Hindu and/or Buddhist beliefes as early as the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE, [48] more recent scholarship suggests that these cultural influences mostly filtered in during the 10th through the early 14th centuries. Present-day scholarship believes these religious and cultural influences mostly came through trade with Southeast Asian thassalocratic empires such as the Srivijaya and Majapahit, which had in turn had trade relationships with India. [48] [49] [50] [51]
Scholars such as Milton Osborne emphasise that despite these beliefs being originally from India, they reached the Philippines through Southeast Asian cultures with Austronesian roots. [52]
Artifacts[ verification needed ] reflect the iconography of the Vajrayana Buddhism and its influences on the Philippines's early states. [53]
Porcelain tradeware from Vietnam, Taiwan, and China were so prevalent during the Philippines "late metal age" that early scholars of Philippine anthropology came to refer to the period as the Philippines' "Porcelain age." Before the discovery of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription in the early 1990s, anthropologist, the richness of historical clues which could be derived from these porcelain artifacts led scholars to use the term "protohistory." [48] The Iron Age consisted of a phase called the "Porcelain Age," and porcelain in this phase entered the Philippines around the nineteenth century A.D. along with "glazed stoneware" from Southeast Asia. [66]
Recent archaeological and other evidence suggests Hinduism has had some cultural, economic, political and religious influence in the Philippines. Among these is the 9th century Laguna Copperplate Inscription found in 1989, deciphered in 1992 to be Kawi script with Sanskrit words; the golden Agusan statue discovered in another part of Philippines in 1917 has also been linked to Hinduism.
Buddhism is a minor religion in the Philippines. It is practiced by 2% of the population in 2020, primarily by Filipinos of Chinese descent.
Tabon Man refers to remains discovered in the Tabon Caves in Lipuun Point in Quezon, Palawan in the Philippines. They were discovered by Robert B. Fox, an American anthropologist of the National Museum of the Philippines, on May 28, 1962. These remains, the fossilized fragments of a skull of a female and the jawbones of three individuals dating back to 16,500 years ago, were the earliest known human remains in the Philippines, until a metatarsal from the Callao Man discovered in 2007 was dated in 2010 by uranium-series dating as being 67,000 years old. However, some scientists think additional evidence is necessary to confirm those fossils as a new species, rather than a locally adapted population of other Homo populations, such as H. erectus or Denisovan.
The Tabon Caves is a cave system located in Lipuun Point, Panitian, Quezon, Palawan in the Philippines. Dubbed as the country's "cradle of civilization", it is a site of archaeological importance due to the number of jar burials and prehistoric human remains found starting from the 1960s, most notably the Tabon Man. The system is a part of the Lipuun Point Reservation, which has been protected by the Philippine government as a museum reservation to protect the caves and its immediate vicinity from deforestation and to preserve the cultural artifacts present there.
The Agusan image is a 2 kg (4.4 lb), 21-karat gold statuette, found in 1917 on the banks of the Wawa River near Esperanza, Agusan del Sur, Mindanao in the Philippines, dating to the 9th–10th centuries. The figure, approximately 178 mm (7.0 in) in height, is of a female Hindu or Buddhist deity, seated cross-legged and wearing a richly-adorned headdress and other ornaments on various parts of the body. It is now on display in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
The Manunggul Jar is a secondary burial jar excavated from a Neolithic burial site in the Manunggul cave of the Tabon Caves at Lipuun Point in Palawan, Philippines. It dates from 890–710 B.C. and the two prominent figures at the top handle of its cover represent the journey of the soul to the afterlife.
The Arts in the Philippines are all the arts in the Philippines, from the beginning of civilization to the present. They reflect a range of artistic influences on the country's culture, including indigenous art. Philippine art consists of two branches: traditional and non-traditional art. Each branch is divided into categories and subcategories.
Alfredo E. Evangelista was a Filipino archeologist and former director of the Anthropology division of the National Museum of the Philippines.
Butuan, also called the Rajahnate of Butuan and the Kingdom of Butuan, was a precolonial Bisaya polity (lungsod) centered around northeastern Mindanao island in present-day Butuan, Philippines. It was known for its gold mining, gold jewelry and other wares, and its extensive trade network across maritime Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Over its long history the lungsod had direct trading relationships with the ancient civilizations of China, Champa, Đại Việt, Pon-i (Brunei), Srivijaya, Majapahit, Kambuja, and even Persia as well as areas now comprised in Thailand.
Robert Bradford Fox (1918–1985) was an anthropologist and leading historian on pre-Hispanic Philippines.
The prehistory of the Philippines covers the events prior to the written history of what is now the Philippines. The current demarcation between this period and the early history of the Philippines is April 21, 900, which is the equivalent on the Proleptic Gregorian calendar for the date indicated on the Laguna Copperplate Inscription—the earliest known surviving written record to come from the Philippines. This period saw the immense change that took hold of the archipelago from Stone Age cultures in 50000 BC to the emergence of developed thalassocratic civilizations in the fourth century, continuing on with the gradual widening of trade until 900 and the first surviving written records.
A balangay, or barangay, is a type of lashed-lug boat built by joining planks edge-to-edge using pins, dowels, and fiber lashings. They are found throughout the Philippines and were used largely as trading ships up until the colonial era. The oldest known balangay are the Butuan boats, which have been carbon-dated to 320 AD and were recovered from several sites in Butuan, Agusan del Norte.
Religions in pre-colonial Philippines included a variety of faiths, of which the dominant faiths were polytheist indigenous religions practiced by the more than one hundred distinct ethnic groups in the archipelago. Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam were also present in some parts of the islands. Many of the traditions and belief systems from pre-colonial Filipino religions continue to be practiced today through the Indigenous Philippine folk religions, Folk Catholicism, Folk Hinduism, among others.
The history of Luzon covers events that happened in the largest island of the Philippine Archipelago, Luzon. Luzon wrested the record of having the oldest man ever discovered in the Philippines with discovery of the Callao Man in 2007, which predated the Tabon Man by around 20,000 years. The written history of Luzon began in around 900 AD with the discovery of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription in 1989. After that, Luzon began to appear in the annals of the Chinese and Japanese. One example would be the Ming Shilu, wherein Luzon appeared in 22 records. Luzon was split among Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms, Muslim principalities, and ethnoreligious tribes, who had trading connections with Borneo, Malaya, Java, Indochina, India, Okinawa, Japan and China before the Spanish established their rule. As a result of the Spanish–American War, Luzon became American territory. In the Second World War, Luzon saw one of the fiercest battles during the Japanese occupation. Luzon, apart from being the largest island, had been the economic and political center of the Philippines ever since the country entered the Western Calendar, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, and the country's largest metropolis, Metro Manila.
Dewil Valley, located in the northernmost part of Palawan, an island province of the Philippines that is located in the Mimaropa region, is an archaeological site composed of thousands of artifacts and features. According to the University of the Philippines Archaeological Studies Program, or UP-ASP, the closest settlement can be found in New Ibajay, which is covered by the town capital of El Nido, which is located around 9 km (5.6 mi) south-east of Dewil Valley. Physically it measures around 7 km (4.3 mi) long, and 4 km (2.5 mi) wide. It is in this place which the Ille Cave, one of the main archaeological sites, can be found. It is actually a network of 3 cave mouths located at its base. It has been discovered that this site in particular has been used and occupied by humans over multiple time periods.
Sarangani is a province located in the Mindanao region of the Philippines and has a total land area of 4,441.79 square kilometers.. Historically, Sarangani already had an established community even before the Westerners came. The early Sarangani society was greatly affected by the Indian and Muslim cultures, and the first inhabitants were the indigenous natives called
Philippine ceramics are mostly earthenware, pottery that has not been fired to the point of vitrification. Other types of pottery like tradeware and stoneware have been fired at high enough temperatures to vitrify. Earthenware ceramics in the Philippines are mainly differentiated from tradeware and stoneware by the materials used during the process and the temperature at which they are fired. Additionally, earthenware and stoneware pottery can generally be referred to as ceramics that are made with local materials, while tradeware ceramics can generally be referred to as ceramics that are made with non-local materials.
The Guyangan Cave System is a group of caves located in the island municipality of Banton, Romblon in the Philippines. It is located in Guyangan Hill, a limestone formation situated in barangays Togbongan and Toctoc, and consists of seven caves spread in an 85.3-hectare (211-acre) area of forest land.
The extensive use of gold during early Philippine history is well-documented, both in the archeological record and in the various written accounts from precolonial and early Spanish colonial times. Gold was used throughout the Philippine archipelago in various decorative and ceremonial items, as clothing, and also as currency.
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