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Archaeological Research in the Batanes Islands, Northern Philippines,
2000 BC to AD 1687
Text and photos by Peter Bellwood
Compiled by Janelle Stevenson
The National Museum of the Philippines, Manila
The Australian National University, Canberra
Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines, Manila
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This project began in 2002. The focus of our fieldwork has been on the Neolithic settlement of the Batanes from Taiwan between 2000 and 1500 BC, a movement associated with the early migration of Austronesian speaking peoples, whose cultural and linguistic descendants went on to settle the whole of Island South East Asia and Oceania within the following 3000 years.
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Mahatao township, central Batan. White stars show
location of the Sunget archaeological site.
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East coast of Itbayat. Torongan Cave in central
foreground.
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Torongan/Sunget Phase provisionally dated between 2200 and 500 BC.
Sites - Sunget on Batan and Torongan Cave on Itbayat.
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Assemblages reveal many clear connections with eastern coastal Taiwan during the Middle and Late Neolithic Fushan and Beinan Phases (2500 ? 500 BC). They include red slipped pottery, pottery handles, biconical baked clay spindle whorls, bi-notched stone fishing sinkers, shouldered and stepped stone adzes with rectangular and trapezoidal cross-sections, and artifacts of Taiwan slate and Fengtian (eastern Taiwan) nephrite.
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Torongan is the oldest site (commencing by 2000 BC) and contains plain red-slipped pottery like that excavated at Chaolaiqiao in SE Taiwan (2200 BC). By 1000 BC, stamped circle decoration became common at Sunget on Batan, and by 700 BC at Anaro on Itbayat.
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< Stamped circle decoration on a red-slipped sherd
from Sunget, 5 cm maximum dimension. The stamping
was done after application of the slip and was
infilled on some sherds with white lime or clay.
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Naidi/Anaro Phase
(provisionally dated 500 BC to AD 1000)
Many sites on occur Batan, both inland and coastal, as well as the key site of Anaro on Itbayat. Sites of this phase can be identified in terms of pottery rim form changes. There is clear evidence at Anaro for continuing trade contact with Taiwan after 500 BC (Fengtian jade and Taiwan slate).
Catastrophic volcanic eruption and landscape burial then occurred on Batan between AD 700 and 1000. There were no obvious volcanic repercussions on Itbayat or Sabtang.
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Rakwaydi Phase
(AD 1000 to ethnographic times)
This phase has very similar undecorated pottery forms right across Batan, Sabtang and Itbayat. This final stage of pre-Spanish life on Batan and Ivuhos Islands was described with remarkable clarity by William Dampier in 1687, when people were living in defended villages termed ijangs, such as the one pictured opposite at Savidug on Sabtang Island.
The Batanes Islands have absolutely no evidence for a presence of any human population prior to the Torongan/Sunget Phase.
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< The Batanes have three main inhabited islands:
Batan,
Itbayat
and Sabtang.
Most of our research so far has been on volcanic Batan
and raised coral Itbayat.
The project has uncovered sites and assemblages that
fall into three archaeological phases with distinctive
characteristics.
The project also examines the archaeology of later
trade contacts between Taiwan, Batanes, and
northern Luzon, contacts that continued through later
prehistory, especially through the island of Lanyu
(Botel Tobago) that lies to the southeast of Taiwan.
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Sunget Main Terrace excavation. The archaeological
layer lies within the old topsoil buried beneath the
yellowish mantle of volcanic ash.
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Left: notched pebble sinkers from various sites in
Taiwan.
Right: seven notched pebble sinkers from Sunget,
Batan Island.
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The 2004 excavation in Torongan Cave (1.5 x 1 m).
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Stone and shell adzes and other stone tools from
various Itbayat sites. Scale is in cm.
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Savidug ijang, Sabtang Island.
The terraces, which are partly of natural origin (the
drum shape is a volcanic agglomerate plug), were
inhabited in late prehistoric times for defensive
purposes.
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Taiwan slate and nephrite artifacts from Anaro,
Itbayat, first millennium AD. Scale is in cm.
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