Mindanaotoday.com | Kalanay Pottery: A silent voice about Northern Mindanao pre-history
By: RAI Bollozos Sanchez | Historyahe!
HI there!
The pottery marker in Bulua, Cagayan de Oro, is one of the city’s forgotten tourist spots. The marker, however, honors the much-known ceramic industry in the metro.
Nevertheless, pottery in the city has a deep history that can be traced back from 750 BCE to 1000 CE. These can be seen at the Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan’s Museo de Oro.
Pottery made from the pre-historic Kalanay Tradition is currently on display at the Museo de Oro.
These potteries were found in separate locations. One from a cliff 30 meters away from where the first cave was discovered and situated at Huluga Cave in Barangay Taguanao, Cagayan de Oro City, and the other was found in Barangay San Martin, in the Municipality of Villanueva, Misamis Oriental.
Both archaeological artifacts were associated with human remains, which meant that both caves were used as a burial places.
These artifacts were found separately in different places, then led to local historians’ various speculations on what pre-historic Cagayan de Oro looked like? What were the utility and possible uses of these potteries? Where it came from (provenance)? Who did the pre-historic people in Cagayan possibly trade with?
As well, what type of early settlers were situated in Huluga? Based on collected sources on a visual basis and from Wilhelm Solheim and anthropologists that wrote about the origins and traditions of these potteries, reconstructing the history behind these potteries.
According to the leading anthropologist Wilhelm Solheim, the Kalanay pottery tradition came from the speakers of Malayo-Austronesian languages; the spread of this pottery tradition was reconstructed in correlation with the origin and spread of some of these Malayo-Austronesian speakers.
These potteries would most likely be associated with Indonesia or Thailand, which has a very rich and long history of ceramics.
Historically, these potteries from the iron age were used for cooking and burial ornaments, and the origin of these kinds is comparable to the potteries developed during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties and ancient China (1600 BCE) and potteries developed during 750 BCE up to 1000 CE of the Sahoin Kalanay and Bau Malayu cultures.
In the Philippines, this pottery was chiefly used as burial ornaments or probably personal belongings of pre-historic indigenous societies.
Different sites were also uncovered with the same archaeological finds; such as the one found in Batugan, Masbate, and Palawan.
The artifacts found have common identification, such as impressed circles used in a complex curvilinear design. How does this pottery land on Philippine soil?
As mentioned by Solheim, as early as 1000 C.E., early Filipinos before trade with the Chinese came, the population consisted of hunters, gatherers, or swidden had most probably made contact with neighboring groups (in Southeast Asia) most likely from Malaysia, Thailand or in Indonesia.
Or perhaps, as hypothesized by Reuben Canoy, this might lead to an assumption that some early settlers in Cagayan, especially the dead bodies found in Huluga and Tagbalitang caves, belonged to the Proto-Austronesian language that came from Southern Asia, which also the aboriginal descendants of the Higaonons.
Still, these artifacts of historical relevance proved to be a tangible unvoiced witnesses of the richness of pre-historic accounts of the history of Cagayan de Oro and of the Philippines.
These gifts from the past served that the waterways that separated the Philippine Archipelago and our neighboring Southeast Asian brothers connected and bonded its way beyond the definition of Philippine History.
These artifacts explain that our bodies of water were our indigenous lifeline. (MT)
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