The Guam, Japan connections

Today begins a new day, as it were, for archaeology in Cebu. After years of helping resuscitate archaeology in Cebu following a decade-long hiatus, Dr. John Peterson, director of the Micronesia Area Research Center (MARC) of the University of Guam (UoG), returns with fellow archaeologist Dr. Stephen Acabado and a team of some 20 students. They are here to carry out joint archaeological fieldwork with the National Museum (NM), the University of San Carlos (USC), and the University of the Philippines-Diliman (UPD).

Dr. Acabado heads the team that I will co-direct in what is Cebu’s first-ever joint Multinational Archaeological Field School carried out in collaboration with the Province of Cebu, through the Cebu Provincial Tourism and Heritage Council (PTHC). I say multinational because it is not just the Americans who will be here but also the Thais, Vietnamese and Cambodians who are Luce Fellows from the University of Hawaii. All will be staying from June 4 to 23 in San Remigio townto continue the work we started there and to survey sites nearby for future excavations.

But before they do so, Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia has invited them to a tour of the southeaster part of the province, where I will meet up with and join them here in Boljoon. Guam and Cebu (as well as Hawaii) have sister province/state ties and this is a good time as ever to strengthen them in the field of culture and heritage.

My USC-NM team that excavated in San Remigio last March and April this year will be exhibiting the surprising Iron Age finds we made while the excavations will progress there. This travelling exhibition will open at the San Remigio Cultural Center on Saturday, June 11, and will transfer to USC Museum and then Museo Sugbo once the excavations are finished.

For the San Remigio excavations, we have once again obtained the approval of Archbishop Jose Palma through the efforts of Msgr. Carlito Pono, chairman of the Archdiocesan Church Heritage Commission. The team therefore looks forward to working with the parish headed by Fr. Fritz Malinao and the municipal government headed by Mayor Jay Olivar.

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Apropos to the visit of Dr. Takenori Nogami, foremost ceramics expert of Arita Folk and History Museum: Dr. Nogami found five sherds of Japanese wares from our previous excavations in Boljoon and 17 others from the Plaza Independencia salvage archaeology work. This puts Cebu firmly on the map insofar as the breadth and width of the trade in export Japanese porcelain wares from 1650 up to the end of Spanish rule.

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My warm welcome to Dr. Lauara Junker of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Dr. Eusebio “Bong” Dizon of the National Museum who will be visiting our excavation site in Boljoon on Saturday. We are deeply honored especially since both are well-published authors of scholarly works on archaeology in the Philippines and abroad. It is just too bad that I cannot be there to welcome them as I will be in San Remigio to accompany the UoG team. Laura and Bong are also busy carrying out the second in a five-year project to excavate the Late Iron Age site of Magsuhot in the municipality of Bacong, Negros Oriental.

This site was the subject of intensive study by Dr. Rosa C.P. Tenazas of USC and Dr. Rowe Candeliña with Prof. Rolly Mascuñana of Silliman University in 1970-71. It is simply amazing that so much is still left to discover and relearn at this site.