Rice Terraces as Defensive Structures: Landscape Modeling in Hapao, Ifugao

Summary

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 violence caused by Spanish colonial incursions on the island of Luzon beginning in the 16th century AD. During the 2014 field season in Hapao, Ifugao, Philippines, we recorded over 150 rice terrace walls that form a single rice terrace system in order to gather a data set for our 3D model, which facilitates viewshed analysis and modeling of walking difficulty. We suggest that in addition to being part of subsistence management, a rice terrace construction could have played a secondary role as a defensive structure. This would have been difficult for large armies to effectively navigate, but would have still allowed for small-scale warfare practices to remain, such as the famed Ifugao head-hunters.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Cross-cultural encounters/entanglements in Island Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific

Keywords

Spatial Coverage