Post-AD 1600 Origins of the Ifugao Rice Terraces: Highland Responses to Spanish Colonial Aims in the Philippines

Summary

Local wisdom and nationalist sentiments would have us uphold the long-held belief in the age of the Ifugao Rice Terraces, pegged at ca. 2,000 years old. Recent findings by the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP), however, indicate that landscape modification (terraced wet-rice cultivation) intensified between c. AD 1600 and AD 1800, suggesting increased demand for food, which could indicate population growth, a period that coincided with the arrival and subsequent occupation of the Spanish of the northern Philippines. This period also shows increased social differentiation and apparent elite manipulation to maintain their position in the society. It is argued that, although the Spanish colonial government never controlled the interior of the Philippine Cordillera, the economic and political transformations in the region were drastic and this was likely due to the Spanish presence in the lowlands. This presentation focuses on the impacts of colonialism on the development of agricultural terraces in the northern highland Philippines.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Landscapes of Production: Recent Research on the Archaeology of Field and Irrigation Systems

Keywords

Spatial Coverage