Cross-cultural encounters/entanglements in Island Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Jane Louise Bolunia. Rey Santiago. Alfredo Orogo.

The significance and importance of Butuan as a trading center as early as the 10th century C.E. Can be based on the thousands of artifacts excavated from 1976 to 2014 ranging from Chinese ceramics belonging mostly to the Song Period (ca. 10th-13th centuries), Southeast Asian and locally produced earthenware pots and stoves. Another very important artifact encountered were plank-built edge-pegged boats that measures approximately 15 meters long and 3 meters wide. In 2012, a larger boat was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Hsieh.

The establishment of Spanish Manila in 1571 marked a turning point in global history. Historians have extolled the roles of Manila as a hub of global trade networks and a key locus of cultural exchange between the East and the West. Nevertheless, the power relationships that defined colonial life in the Manila area were taken for granted by scholars. The major ethnolingustic groups of colonial Manila - the Spaniards, the indigenous Tagalog, and the Chinese - formed a specific urban landscape...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mikhail Echavarri. Stephen Acabado.

Local wisdom and nationalist sentiments would have us uphold the long-held belief in the age of the Ifugao Rice Terraces, espoused by pioneer anthropologists of the Philippines, Roy F. Barton and Henry Otley Beyer. Recent findings by the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP), however, have provided new information which have driven us to rethink this proposed date, primarily because of the dearth of archaeological data to support the "long-history" model. Evidence is now pointing to a relatively...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Grace Barretto-tesoro.

Cosmology prior to European contact has been the focus of recent research in the Philippines. The objective of this paper is to investigate cosmology practiced in the Philippines prior to the introduction of Christianity during the Spanish colonial occupation from the 16th century AD onwards. This research is significant because it will show that elements of the tripartite cosmology of past populations in the Philippines which can be traced from the Neolithic period persist until the present...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeleine Yakal. Jacy Moore.

Grave goods have been especially useful in the archaeological examination and determination of political economy and levels of inter-group interaction. Among the Ifugao of the northern highland Philippines, ethnohistoric and ethnographic datasets indicate that the group can be considered a ranked society. Dominant Philippine historical narratives also suggest that the Ifugao were in isolation during Spanish colonization. Our excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village provide material support for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Koller. Kaoru Ueda.

Southeast Asia is a region whose inhabitants have long been engaged in long-distance trade connected through ocean and river systems. This paper presents the preliminary results of a petrographic study on earthenware samples from archaeological sites in Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand in order to scientifically investigate the putative trade networks. The preliminary results show a complex picture of local production and imported ceramics, one that changes depending on the location and the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Lauer. Alexandra McDougle.

Infant death in Ifugao villages has only been viewed through a lens of modern ethnography. Recent excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village site have revealed new information on the resource base, trade networks and impact of outside groups on the prehistoric and early historic Ifugao. This work has produced a small sample (16) of individuals who died at, or around, full term to the age of two years. The age, health, and mortuary profiles of these skeletons will be presented and placed into...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandy De Leon.

Investigations of social interaction and notions of community among island societies of Southeast Asia during the Metal Age (500 BC-AD 800) are very limited, especially in the Philippines. This general lack of well-documented settlement, household and burial data, and underdeveloped theoretical frameworks interpreting the archaeological remains, impede our understanding of social organization in the period and fail to contextualize the appearance socially stratified and politically centralized...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Peterson.

The spread of Islamic influence throughout Island Southeast Asia and into the Philippines Archipelago was rapid and extremely effective in the second millennium AD. This model of colonization utilized down-the-line and proxy trading through Taosug and Iranun raiders as well as by the establishment of entrepôts established through intermarriage and local exchange. Power flowing through horizontal networks cemented regional networks and exported an extensive power structure into an otherwise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bobby Orillaneda.

Current historical and archaeological evidence portrays fifteenth century CE maritime trade in Southeast Asia as a complex and multi-layered landscape. A main argument centers on the factors that shaped the development of this intra-regional trade. Some scholars consider foreign entities (e.g. China and some Indian states) as the primary instruments that heavily influenced Southeast Asian socio-political and economic affairs while others promote Southeast Asian agency and contends that it is the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecilia Smith.

Historical documents provide most of what is currently known regarding Spain’s subjugation of the Philippine archipelago. However, in this paper I discuss how archaeological evidence of indigenous prestige economies enriches our understanding of the interaction between the encroaching Spanish colonizers with indigenous polities. My study of imported ceramics found in the Malangwa watershed, Negros Oriental indicate that, contrary to Spanish records, indigenous access to foreign prestige goods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Fitzpatrick. Jessica Stone. Justin Tackney. John Krigbaum. Greg Nelson.

Ongoing research at the Chelechol ra Orrak rockshelter in Palau, Micronesia, has revealed the presence of one of the oldest (ca. 3000-1700 BP) and most demographically diverse cemeteries in the Pacific. Archaeological excavation of only a small portion of the site indicates that dozens of individuals were buried here for more than a millennia. Subsequent osteological analysis coupled with recent attempts to extract ancient DNA and stable isotopes (Sr and Pb) have shed new light on genetic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wolfgang Alders. Jared Koller.

This paper investigates the potential defensive functions of rice terrace construction in Ifugao, Philippines, through an exploration of how landscape analysis and 3D modeling might contribute to established archaeological and ethnographic understandings of the region. While still under debate, a growing body of archaeological evidence suggests that the settlement of the Ifugao highlands and the development of intensive rice terrace farming may have been a strategy for avoiding political...