The Unto Site: Excavations at a Late First Millennium B.C. and Mid-Second Millennium A.D. Habitation Site in Southeastern Negros Island, the Philippines

The Dumaguete-Bacong area of southeastern Negros Island has been the recent focus of probabilistic, systematic regional survey that has identified, to date, over 70 "sites," and of systematic excavations at two of the recorded sites. In 1989 excavations were undertaken at one of these, the Unto site, which uncovered evidence for two periods of prehistoric occupation, the earliest of which dates to the late first millennium B.C. and the later to the mid-second millennium A.D. This site is significant in several respects, including yielding the earliest evidence for occupation in the southeastern Negros region and the presence of decorated earthenwares identical to a number of previously undated decorated wares (e.g., "Kalanay") that have been recovered from a number of islands in the central Philippines. This paper presents a summary of the excavations, of the features and artifactual remains uncovered, and of the morphological and technological analyses of the earthenware assemblages. Evidence of residential structures was uncovered in each period of occupation. Associated with these structures were middens yielding plain and decorated (i.e., slipped, incised, and/or carved) earthenware sherds, lithic artifacts, sherds of Asian and European tradewares, iron slag, metal fragments, fired clay lumps, and shell, bone, and tooth fragments. The paper concludes with a discussion of each of the two periods of prehistoric occupation and of a third, possibly early historic period of occupation at the site. Further analysis of the Unto site, especially within a regional context, will provide important information for addressing a number of questions central to our understanding of southeastern N egros prehistory including: the nature of sociopolitical complexity during the late first millennium B.C. early first millennium A.D., the production and distribution of "Kalanay" wares, and the changing sociopolitical context of decorated earthenwares. KEYWORDS: earthenware, ceramic analysis, chronology, "Kalanay" wares, Negros Island, Philippines, Southeast Asia. Island, Philippines, Southeast Asia

Later prehistory of the Philippines: colonial images and archaeology

The colonial experience of the Philippine Islands as a Spanish and, more recently, an American dependency, has shaped Western peceptions of the people and history of the archipelago. Little has been known about the islands' precolonial past, but archaeologists are now beginning to investigate it, as in the project on the island of Negros described here