The lower Palaeolithic record in the Philippines (original) (raw)

2010, Quaternary International 223-224: 444-450

Prehistoric archaeology and the exploration of Palaeolithic sites have a rather long tradition in the Philippines. Commencing with H. Otley Beyer in the 1920s, the systematic study of prehistoric sites and lithic materials has become a major field of Philippine Archaeology. While the focus of research was traditionally on Palawan Island and mainly the Tabon cave complex, as well as the open sites of Cagayan Valley in Northern Luzon, Lithic Archaeology has much expanded in recent years. The discovery and investigation of significant sites in the Penablanca limestone massif, at the foothills of the Sierra Madre and on Cabarruyan Island in Luzon, in Northern Palawan at El Nido, and along the Cagayan de Oro River on Mindanao Island in the South of the Archipelago, added more waypoints to the archaeological chart of the Philippines. Since the opening of the University of the Philippines’ Archaeological Studies Program in 1996 and the inauguration of its Lithic Studies Laboratory, the comprehensive technological, morphological and functional analysis of stone tools has become a standard procedure in Philippine Archaeology. Meanwhile, a number of Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic assemblages have been studied and various new insights into the prehistoric technology of the region were gained. Seemingly simple flake technologies that can be found continuously from the Upper Pleistocene into the Holocene, and throughout the archipelago, stand in marked contrast to Lower Palaeolithic core tool traditions, Middle Palaeolithic elements and even a microlithic component, all of them turning lithic analysis into an exciting field of Philippine Archaeology. This paper presents an overview of lithic sites and assemblages in the Philippines and introduces the methodology and practice of current lithic analysis in the Philippines.

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