Expansion Modeling and Dating the Ifugao Agricultural Terrace Systems Through Volumetric Analysis and Energetic Modeling

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological dating of agricultural terraces is complicated due to the nature of its technological foundation and use. Various methods have been proposed for dating agricultural features, but the issue of stratigraphic disturbance persists. In this paper, we highlight our work in the UNESCO-listed Ifugao Rice Terraces as a case study to address the limitations of model-free stratigraphy-based dating and also to serve as an example for future energetic studies that utilize 3D volumetric analysis. We present a methodology that incorporates multiple datasets, which include ethnohistorical, ethnographical, and spatial, to establish terrace construction sequence and development over time by assessing the amount of time, energy, and organization that would be required to create the modern landscape through remote sensing image classification and energetic reconstructions within 3D environments. Utilizing archaeological datasets acquired by the Ifugao Archaeological Project from four Ifugao sites and previous archaeological research in the region, we argue that wet-rice cultivation in the highlands of the Philippine Cordilleras is a recent phenomenon that coincided with contact with the Spanish, one that supports the argument that the emergence of wet-rice cultivation in the highland region was an indicator of influx of lowland populations avoiding the Spanish colonization.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24264