Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T10:07:08.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Bayesian approach to dating agricultural terraces: a case from the Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Stephen Acabado*
Affiliation:
*Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822, USA (Email: [email protected])

Abstract

Field terraces are notoriously difficult to date – but historically of high significance. Here the author uses a Bayesian model applied to radiocarbon dates to date the tiered rice fields of the northern Philippines. They turn out to have been built in the sixteenth century probably by peoples retreating inland and upland from the Spanish.

Type
Method
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acabado, S. 2003. Land use and agricultural intensification: GIS-based analysis of the Ifugao landscape. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Hawai'i.Google Scholar
Antolín, F. 1789. Notices of the pagan Igorots in 1789 (Translated by Scott, W. H.). Asian Folklore Studies 29: 177253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barton, R. 1919. Ifugao law (University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 15). Berkeley & Los Angeles (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Barton, R. 1930. The half-way sun. New York: Brewer & Warren.Google Scholar
Beyer, H. O. 1926. Recent discoveries in Philippine archaeology. Proceedings of the Third Pan-Pacific Science Congress 2: 2469–91.Google Scholar
Beyer, H. O. 1955. The origins and history of the Philippine rice terraces. Proceedings of the Eighth Pacific Science Congress 1: 387–98.Google Scholar
Brosius, P. 1988. Significance and social being in Ifugao agricultural production. Ethnology 27(1): 97110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck, C., Kenworth, J., Litton, C. & Smith, A.. 1991. Combining archaeological and radiocarbon information: a Bayesian approach to calibration. Antiquity 65: 808–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck, C., Litton, C. & Smith, A.. 1992. Calibration of radiocarbon results pertaining to related archaeological events. Journal of Archaeological Science 19: 497512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck, C., Cavanagh, W. & Litton, C.. 1996. The Bayesian approach to interpreting archaeological data. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Buck, C.E., Christen, J. A. & James, G. N.. 1999. BCal: an on-line Bayesian radiocarbon calibration tool. Internet Archaeology 7. Available at http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue7/buckindex.htmlGoogle Scholar
Conklin, H. 1967. Some aspects of ethnographic research in Ifugao. Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series 2, 30(1): 99121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buck, C.E., Christen, J. A. & James, G. N.. 1972. Land use in north central Ifugao. New York: American Geographical Society.Google Scholar
Buck, C.E., Christen, J. A. & James, G. N.. 1980. Ethnographic atlas of Ifugao. NewHaven (CT): Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dozier, E. 1966. Mountain arbiters: the changing life of a Philippine hill people. Tucson (AZ): University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Dye, T. S. In press. Traditional Hawaiian surface architecture: absolute and relative dating, in Dye, T.S. (ed.) Research designs for Hawaiian archaeology: agriculture, astronomy and architecture. Honolulu (HI): Society for Hawaiian Archaeology.Google Scholar
Eder, J. 1982. No water in the terraces: agricultural stagnation and social change at Banaue, Ifugao. Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society 10: 101–16.Google Scholar
Jocano, F. L. 2001. Filipino prehistory: rediscovering pre-colonial heritage. Quezon City: Punlad Research House Inc.Google Scholar
Keesing, F. 1962. The ethnohistory of northern Luzon. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kha, N. 1965. The forests of Pinus khasya and Pinus merkusii of central Vietnam (Translated by Denys Fanshawe, B.). Oxford: Commonwealth Forestry Institute.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, T. & Graves, M.. 2008. Variable development of dryland agriculture in Hawai'i: a fine-grained chronology from the Kohala Field System, Hawai'i Island. Current Anthropology 49: 771802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, F. 1967. The hudhud of Dinulawan and Bugan at Gonhadan. Saint Louis Quarterly 5: 527713.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, F. 1962. Religion of the Ifugao. Manila: The Philippine Sociological Review.Google Scholar
Maher, R. 1973. Archaeological investigations in central Ifugao. Asian Perspectives 16(1): 3970.Google Scholar
Schiffer, M. B. 1986. Radiocarbon dating and the ‘old wood’ problem: the case of the Hohokam chronology. Journal of Archaeological Science 13: 1330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, W. H. 1974. The discovery of the Igorots. Quezon City: New Day Publishers.Google Scholar
Stuiver, M. & Polach, H.. 1977. Reporting of 14C data. Radiocarbon 19(3): 355–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, R. E. 1987. Radiocarbon dating: an archaeological perspective. Orlando (FL): Academic Press.Google Scholar
UNESCO. 1995. Rice terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras. Available at http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&idsite=722Google Scholar