Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for Philippines:

Philippines: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An archipelago of about 7,100 islands and islets lying about 500 miles (800 km) off the southeastern coast of Asia. A firm archaeological sequence began there c 30,000 years ago, at Tabon Cave on Palawan Island. There are Late Pleistocene stone industries, the spread of a small flake and blade technology after 5000 BC (Holocene), and the arrival and rapid spread of Austronesian-speaking horticulturists after 3000 BC. Rich jar-burial assemblages occur in the islands from about 1000 BC; bronze and iron appear later. Chinese traders visited and lived on the islands from about 1000 AD. Indian culture reached the archipelago during the 14th-16th centuries via Indonesian kingdoms, notably the Java-based kingdom of Majapahit. This is particularly noticeable in Philippine languages and literatures where Sanskrit loanwords and ancient Indian motifs abound. At the beginning of the 15th century Filipinos were primarily shifting cultivators, hunters, and fishermen with animistic beliefs. Islam was introduced later in the same century, followed by Ferdinand Magellan's discovery of the Philippines in 1521.
Austronesian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Malayo-Polynesian
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: The major language family of the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific (including Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, parts of southern Vietnam, Madagascar, Melanesia (excluding much of New Guinea), Micronesia, and Polynesia). The family is divided into 1) Western Austronesian, or Indonesian, containing about 200 languages, and 2) Eastern Austronesian, or Oceanic, with about 300 languages. Proto-Austronesian probably started in southern China or Taiwan before 3000 BC. Austronesian speakers were the first humans to settle the Pacific islands beyond western Melanesia. Austronesians were the most widely spread ethno-linguistic group on earth, with the distance from Madagascar to Easter Island being 210 degrees of longitude.
Banaue: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A region of rice and house terraces in northern Luzon, the Philippines, that dates to c 1000 BC. It belonged to the Ifugao people and the terraces extend in giant steps up mountain sides.
Batungan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave sites in the central Philippines dating to at least 900 BC and hold flaked stone tools and pottery, some decorated with stamped patterns. There is a possible connection with pottery of Taiwan, with Kalanay / Sulawesi, and with Lapita ware.
betel nut: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: The nut or fruit of the Areca Palm, which is chewed in tropical Asia, Melanesia, and New Guinea as a stimulant. It was misnamed by Europeans because it is chewed with the betal leaf; hence, betel palm is the Areca Palm from which the nut is obtained. Archaeological occurrences include Spirit Cave (c 10,000-7,000 BC), eastern Timor (early Holocene), and several sites in the Philippines, where teeth stained by the nut have been found from c 3000 BC.
Borneo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest island of Southeast Asia, first mentioned in Ptolemy's Guide to Geography" of c 150 AD. Joined to mainland Southeast Asia during the low sea-level Pleistocene period archaeological sequences have been found in the Niah Caves of Sarawak and the Madai-Tingkayu region of Sabah. The Niah Great Cave sequence suggests the presence of a population of early Australoids from about 40 000 years ago and evidence from all sites indicate that the ancestors of present-day Borneans arrived around 3000 BC possibly from the Philippines. Though traces of Homo erectus from 2 million years ago were found on neighboring Java so far no evidence has been found of Homo erectus in Borneo. Roman trade beads and Indo-Javanese artifacts give evidence of a flourishing civilization dating to the 2nd or 3rd century BC. A Sanskrit inscription dated to c 400 AD is the earliest historical document on the island. Three rough foundation stones with an inscription recording a gift to a Brahman priest date from the early 5th century AD found at Kutai provide evidence of a Hindu kingdom. The first recorded European visitor was Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone who visited on his way from India to China in 1330."
breadfruit: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bread-fruit
CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: The fruit of a tree in the South Sea islands that is about the size of a melon and whose whitish pulp (with the consistency of new bread) requires cooking before it can be eaten. The tree was probably first cultivated from the Philippines to New Guinea, and attained great economic importance in the Polynesian Islands, especially the Marquesas and Tahiti, about 1500-2000 years ago. The fruit was also dried or allowed to ferment, and could then be stored for several years in underground pits. In 1788, Captain William Bligh was attempting to take breadfruit saplings from Tahiti to the West Indies when the famous mutiny on HMS Bounty occurred.
Cabalwanian industry: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of flakes in Luzon, Philippines, thought to be early Holocene.
Cagayan Valley: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A broad valley in northern Luzon, Philippines, with several sites from which some association has been found between a pebble and flake industry with a Middle Pleistocene fauna including elephants, Stegodon, rhinoceros, and bovids.
Dimolit: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic open settlement site in northern Luzon, Philippines, dating from c 2500 BC. The occupation had pottery, flakes with edge-gloss, and postholes of small square houses, and items paralleled in Taiwanese Neolithic sites.
Huxley's Line: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: The biological and geographical divide between Bali and Lombok and Borneo and Sulawesi, west of the Philippines and marking the boundary of the East Asian faunal zone during the Pleistocene periods of low sea-level. It is often confused with Wallace's Line, which follows the same course but runs south, not west, of the Philippines. Huxley's Line also marks the limit of settlement by hominids before the emergence of anatomically modern humans (c 50,000 years ago).
Kalanay: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site on Masbate Island in the central Philippines, which has produced incised and impressed pottery of a type found widely in Southeast Asia and South Vietnam from c 500/400 BC to 1500 AD. Kalanay is one of the type sites for the 'Sa-Huynh-Kalanay' pottery complex (Sa-Huynh of coastal Vietnam). There are metal period jar burials from the late 1st millennium BC or later.
kettle drum: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dong Son drums
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Large bronze drums, also known as Dong Son drums (northern Vietnam), first produced more than 2000 years ago and found throughout Southeast Asia (with the exception of the Philippines and the island of Borneo). These drums are generally associated with wealth, power, and fertility and were important in rituals.
Lapita: CATEGORY: artifact; culture
DEFINITION: A major Oceanic culture complex, named after the type site of Lapita, New Caledonia. It is defined by a distinctive type of pottery with dentate-stamped banded decoration in geometric patterns, appearing c 3500 bp and which appeared throughout much of the western Pacific, including Fiji and Samoa. Most Lapita sites are on offshore islands and assemblages include elaborate shell tools and ornaments, the use of obsidian, and stone adzes. The obsidian and pottery style suggest long-distance trade. The culture is almost certainly associated with ancestral Polynesians moving eastwards from island Southeast Asia (perhaps from the Philippines), through previously inhabited Melanesia, to the hitherto empty islands of Tonga and Samoa in Western Polynesia. The culture therefore represents the origin of the Polynesians prior to their settlement of geographical Polynesia. It is thought to be associated with the spread of Austronesian speakers into the Western Pacific.
Leang Tuwo Mane'e: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rock shelter on the coast of Karakellang, Talaud Islands, northeastern Indonesia, which has produced a preceramic small blade industry, c 3000 BC, followed by the appearance of a Neolithic assemblage by about 2000 BC, probably introduced from the Philippines.
Micronesia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ethnographic and geographic region comprising the Palau, Marianas, Guam, Nauru, Caroline and Marshall Islands, and Kiribati. The Palaus and Marianas were probably settled from the Philippines after 2000 BC and each has a ceramic sequence throughout prehistory. The eastern groups, mainly atolls, were settled later, perhaps from a Lapita source in Melanesia, and pottery production died out after initial settlement (as in Polynesia). Physically and linguistically, the Micronesians are close cousins to the Polynesians though their Polynesian ancestors appear to have moved through Melanesia rather than Micronesia.
Musang Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave in northern Luzon, Philippines with an early flake industry c 12,000-9000 BC. There is also a Neolithic assemblage dated to c 3500 BC (or later).
Near Oceania: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: Those islands of the Pacific Ocean that can be reached by watercraft without going out of sight of land -- basically comprising the Indonesian archipelago, the Philippines, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.
nephrite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The more common form of jade, an iron calcium magnesium silicate of the amphibole mineral group. It is whitish to dark green in color, though it can be blue and black, prized as an ornamental stone for carving and jewelry. Jadeite is tougher and more compact. Sources of the material are known in China, Siberia, Pakistan, New Zealand, the Philippines, New Guinea and Australia, Poland, the Swiss Alps, Italy and Sicily, and North and South America.
Palau Islands: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island group and independent republic in western Micronesia, perhaps settled from the Philippines c 2000 BC. Its prehistory includes a continuous pottery sequence to ethnographic times. There are large-scale terraced, horticultural, and defensive hilltop sites. Glass beads and bracelet segments are characteristic artifacts.
Remote Oceania: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: The small islands of the Pacific that can only be reached by sailing out of sight of land, including all the islands east of a line stretching from the Philippines to the Solomons.
Sa-huynh: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Sa Huynh
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: Iron Age culture and site on the central coast of southern Vietnam, dating mainly from the 1st millennium BC and associated with pottery urn burials and rich artifact assemblages paralleled most closely in the Philippines, north Borneo, and Sulawesi. The culture may be associated with early Chamic (Austronesian) settlement in Vietnam or proto-Cham, and appears to be contemporary with, but separate from, the Dong-son culture of north Vietnam. Most assemblages known are from jar burials. Characteristic artifacts include lingling-o earrings and double-headed animal pendants of jadeite. It was active c 600 BC-c 100 AD.
Tabon Caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large complex of limestone caves in southwest Palawan, the Philippines, which have produced a sequence ranging from c 22,000 BC to the late metal age. Tabon Cave itself has a flake industry of early Australian type dating from 30,000-9000 years ago, in association with early Australoid skeletal remains which are dated c 22,000-20,000 BC. A simple blade technology appears in Duyong Cave c 5000 BC and other caves continue through the Neolithic (c 3800-500 BC) and into a rich jar-burial tradition elsewhere in the Philippines. There are also later deposits with Chinese ceramic imports.
Taiwan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Formosa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Island 100 miles (160 km) off the southeast coast of the China mainland. Taiwan had a native aboriginal population of Malayo-Polynesian ancestry and it occupies an important position in the prehistory of Southeast Asia. Evidence for pre-Neolithic settlement is from c 3500 BC, followed by a Neolithic culture (Ta-p'en-k'eng culture). That culture had cord-marked pottery and was related to contemporary rice-cultivating cultures on the adjacent mainland. Linguistically, it represents the earliest recognizable phase of Austronesian language in the islands Southeast Asia. Later Taiwan Neolithic cultures also show close connections with south China and the Philippines. Major Chinese settlement of the island did not occur until the 17th century AD.
Tasaday: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Small group of forest food collectors isolated in the rain-forests of Mindanao, the Philippines, first reported by anthropological investigators in 1971. Numbering 25 at the time, the Tasadays have a simple technology and food-gathering strategy. Linguistic studies suggest that they may instead have descended from an original horticultural population and simplified their own culture during about 700 years of isolation. The Tasaday were dressed only in loincloths and skirts made of orchid leaves, used only crude stone tools (axes and scrapers) and wooden implements (fire drills and digging sticks), and had no weapons for hunting or war.
Yap: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Guap
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Island and archipelago of the western Caroline Islands, part of the Federated States of Micronesia, know for large wheel-shaped discs of stone money. The stone is quarried in the Palau Islands and taken to Yap by canoe. Yap was at the head of a chain of trade and tribute in the Carolines, the so-called Yapese empire" and in contact with Palau and the Marianas Islands as seen in similar red ware of the 2nd millennium BC. The occurrence of child jar-burial suggests later contact with the Philippines."

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