Early Maritime Involvement of Butuan with other Southeast Asian Polities and China

Summary

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 excavated projected to reach 25-30 meters long. Questions regarding Butuan's position as a trading center can be answered further by the results of the geomorphological studies conducted in 1986 and 2001. Major geologic events drastically changed Butuan's landscape as a group of islands prior to the 15th century and to its present form as part of Mindanao Island today. To further determine the use and capability of the boats in the open seas, replicas were built and actual sailing were undertaken in the South China Sea reaching the waters of South Vietnam and returning to the Philippines.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

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