The search is on

Boljoon—Our joint University of San Carlos (USC) and National Museum team of archaeologists arrived here yesterday to begin the sixth phase of excavations.

We are back, this time with funding from the Sumitomo Foundation of Japan, which has provided a generous facility to look for more Japanese ceramics dating to the 1600s and publish the results in both scholarly and popular format. In 2009, you see, the fifth round of excavations recovered for the first time in Philippine history not one but three intact and complete ceramics that were clearly made in the Hizen kilns in what is now Saga prefecture in Japan.

How these ceramics reached Boljoon, south Cebu, when they would have been destined for the lucrative markets in Mexico and the New World during the Manila Galleon Trade, needs to be explained fully. For now, archaeologists are here to look for more evidence of these ceramics because before Boljoon, only a few broken fragments were recovered in the Philippines, on a site in Intramuros where such ceramic wares were loaded onto galleons bound for Acapulco, Mexico.

Those very ceramics we unearthed in 2009 here in Boljoon are now on display at the Boljoon Parish Museum. And next week an expert from Arita Folklore and History Museum, Dr. Takenori Nogami, who identified these ceramics himself, will join the dig. It was Dr. Ken, as he is fondly called, who also identified the shards from Intramuros (recovered during an excavation conducted by the National Museum).

Today, we begin opening a unit we closed off in 2009 because we ran out of time and funds. We unearthed only the feet of the burial. We hope that during this current dig, the entire burial will be fully exposed as a good beginning to what we hope will be another promising first for Boljoon. More on this next week.

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Cognratulations to my professor and dissertation adviser, Dr. John Peterson, on the successful conduct of underwater excavations in Mactan. This is the first-ever underwater dig in the country to be funded by National Geographic and Cebu is doubly proud that this was carried out here.

Dr. Peterson is head of the Micronesia Area Research Center (MARC), University of Guam (UOG) and is the new editor of the Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, the social science journal published by the University of San Carlos Press since 1970. He is also married to a Carcaranon. John has written a lot about the archaeology of Cebu but this excavation is the most ambitious yet not just for him but also for Philippine archaeology. We therefore await with bated breath the results of this seminal work.

We also await with excitement the upcoming joint excavations of NM, USC, UOG and UP in San Remigio. So much is going on in Cebu archaeology right now that this province is surely the envy of others. Kudos to all!