Introduction

The Spanish conquest of the New World resulted in a dramatic decline of indigenous populations and the subsequent colonization of most of what we now refer to as Iberian Americas. The colonization process however, was not monolithic; multiple groups were documented to have moved into mountain ranges to avoid and/or resist direct colonization by the Spanish (e.g., Dillehay 2014; Mcalister 1984; Palka 2005; Peterson 1991). In the Philippines, the Spanish conquest also proceeded swiftly in the lowlands, but was unable to establish a permanent presence in the Cordillera highlands (Fig. 1). The effects of colonialism in the highlands, however, are evident particularly in the economic and political changes that are archaeologically documented in Ifugao. The Ifugao locale is a frontier area, a region that Paredes (2013, p. 58) calls pericolonial. Ethnographically, the concept of pericolonialism is manifested in language, myths, and material symbols (Paredes 2013, pp. 167–173). I borrow the term to refer to groups that were generally unconquered politically, but exhibit patterns that point to the influence of colonialism.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The northern Philippines and major localities in the region mentioned in the text

Full size image

The concept of pericolonialism was first used in literary studies, particularly, on Native American literature (Carpenter 2008, p. 16; Weaver et al. 2006). Similar to the definition proposed in this essay, Weaver et al. (2006, p. 39) used the term because it “acknowledges the thorough pervading nature of settler colonialism and marks it as something that, for indigenes, must be gotten around, under, or through.” Pericolonialism, as a neologism, was developed to differentiate it from the term “paracolonialism” (Vizenor 1999, p. 105) that refers to classic conquest with active settler colonialism.

In this article, I refer to pericolonial archaeology as the study of groups who were not directly colonized by a foreign force, but that shows parallel culture change with groups who were directly colonized. Changes such as economic intensification, political centralization or development of complexity, shifts in denser settlement patterns, and increasing inequality characterized conquered groups. I argue that the impact of colonialism precipitated similar processes in pericolonial areas to counter the threat of conquest. More generally, the concept provides a heuristic model to break the false dichotomy between the colonized and the uncolonized; a decolonizing methodological approach.

Intrinsic in my view of pericolonial setting is the capacity of indigenous peoples to resist conquest, either through direct military resistance, or through migration to areas that are out of reach of the foreign invaders, or both. I echo J. Scott’s (1998, 2008, 2009) argument that moving away and/or nonconformity are acts of active resistance. The ethnohistoric literature has documented such response to Spanish aims both in the New World (Dillehay 2007; Mcalister 1984; Palka 2005; Peterson 1991) and in the Philippines (Paredes 2013; Talastas 1994; Tolentino 1994; Scott 1970, 1994). In the Philippine Cordilleras, particularly in Ifugao Province, the Spanish were never able to establish permanent presence, although they had intermittent religious or military camps in eight districts (Kiangan, Mayoyao, Bunhian, Halipan, Oleleon, Lagawe, Hapao, and Banaue) in the region.

As a case in point, this paper focuses on the archaeology of the Ifugao (the term Ifugao references both the ethnolinguistic group and the province), whose ethnic identity today is largely based on the idea of being unconquered. Whereas the lowland Philippines became Hispanized, most of the northern highland Philippines remained on the fringes of Spanish colonialism. Spanish cultural footprints in the province are scant, owing to the failure of the colonial power to establish a permanent presence in the region. Nevertheless, there are major economic and political shifts in the highlands that coincided with the arrival of the Spanish in the northern Philippines. The recent findings of the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP) indicate that landscape modification (terraced wet-rice cultivation) intensified between ca. 1600 and 1800, suggesting increased demand for food and the introduction of new agricultural products (domesticated pigs and water buffalo) and methods; which also indicate population growth. The period also shows other forms of economic intensification, such as the dramatic increase in raw counts of tradeware ceramics (imported Asian ceramics) in the archaeological record. I contend that, although the Spanish colonial government never controlled the interior of the Philippine Cordillera, the economic and political transformations in the region were drastic and this was due to the Spanish presence in the lowlands and sporadic military activities in Ifugao. Excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village (Kiangan, Ifugao) also imply that the settlement had continuous interaction with lowland groups and other highland groups between ca. 1600 and late 1800, refuting the idea of isolation. The Old Kiyyangan Village was the largest village in northern Philippine highlands that the Spanish encountered in the mid-1700s (Antolin 1970). Archaeological (Acabado 2009, 2013, 2015), ethnohistoric (Keesing 1962), and ethnographic (Lambrecht 1967) studies suggest that the Ifugao originally inhabited the lowland Magat Valley but moved to the interior of the Central Cordillera once the Spanish appeared in the region.

In this paper, I argue that the archaeology of the Ifugao describes processes seen on pericolonial areas. Archaeological findings in the region clearly indicate economic intensification (through wet-rice agriculture and trade and interaction with lowland groups) occurred soon after Spanish appearance in the northern Philippines. This paper also renews the call of Paynter (2000) to focus anthropologically framed research questions to develop a stronger historical archaeology (Deagan 1988, p. 7). Doing so allows us to have a nuanced understanding of the processes that shaped colonialism. In addition, the approach provides an avenue for the participation of indigenous peoples and descendant communities in the research process. This approach also bridges the gap between current identity and the past. Finally, by focusing on the archaeology of the Ifugao, I intend to show that colonial scholarship has shaped present-day Philippine ethnic identities and perpetuates what Aguilar (2005) calls the history of Filipino nationalist ilustrados (elites).

The Archaeology of Colonialism

The long Spanish colonial experience in the Philippines has led to interpretations of the past that glorify the colonialists’ history and their ability to subjugate populations. Trigger (1984) considers this an example of colonialist archaeology whose sole intention is to discredit the capacity of indigenous populations to adjust inventively to the colonial experience. As such, the primary model to explain the peopling of the Philippines racializes cultural distinctions with the newer populations associated with superior technology. American ethnologist H. Otley Beyer (1948) popularized the “waves of migration” theory, originally proposed by Spanish-period scholars (i.e., Blumentritt 1882; Montano 1885). It has since become the basis of the dominant historical and archaeological models of the peopling of the Philippines among most Filipinos and has achieved a myth-like status. This despite the fact that the model is not only intrinsically derogatory but wholly unsupported by archaeological, linguistic, historical, or other evidence.

In contrast, the archaeological record from the Old Kiyyangan Village suggests that post-contact Ifugaos were actively interacting with lowland towns established by the Spanish. Data recovered by the IAP forefronts the role of indigenous peoples as active players during the colonial period, as Lyons and Papadopoulos (2002) and Hart et al. (2012) proposed in other contexts.

This work expands the literature on colonialism that focuses on populations that did not have direct and/or intense interaction with the colonizing power. While recent research on the archaeology of colonialism elsewhere has certainly highlighted the agency of indigenous populations in tackling the pressures of forced subjugation (Dillehay 2007; Dietler 2010; Dietler and López-Ruiz 2009; Given 2004; Lyons and Papadopoulos 2002; Murphy et al. 2010), most studies to date have focused on communities that had direct interaction with the colonizers (i.e., Liebmann 2012; Lightfoot 2005; Stein 2005).

Archaeological studies of colonialism focus on the relationships between indigenous peoples and a dominant political entity. A number of archaeologists have defined the concept of colonialism using this perspective (e.g., Lightfoot et al. 1998; Lyons and Papadopoulos 2002; Mullins and Paynter 2000; Silliman 2005; Stein 2002, 2005; Van Buren 2010). Such archaeological investigations have linked the archaeological record to agency (Bourdieu 1977, 1990; Giddens 1984), where individuals are seen as capable of making intentional decisions – either strategically to advance their own interests (Blanton et al. 1996; Joyce and Winter 1996) or through the opportunities offered or constrained by their lived experience (Ortner 1995; Pauketat 2000; Silliman 2001). Agency has become a powerful theoretical tool to investigate political relationships, especially within the context of a hierarchical system (Scott 1990) and power relationships in a colonial setting.

In the Philippines, Spanish colonial policies affected the everyday life of the pericolonial Ifugao. In particular, the policy of reducción forced indigenous groups to settle in lowland towns that facilitated colonial control. This would have triggered resistance by direct military opposition or by moving away. The latter was a conscious decision to regroup and consolidate their political and economic resources that allowed the Ifugao to successfully fend of conquest.

Pericolonial Archaeology

Ethnohistorians have demonstrated the dynamic movement of populations to avoid conquest to areas that Palka (2009, p. 306) refers to as “zones of refuge” in numerous contexts. Mcalister (1984) described Northern Mexico groups moving into areas that are out of reach of Spanish conquistadors; Peterson (1991, pp. 69–73) investigated Taracahitan-speaking populations in New Spain that were never conquered by the Spanish; Keesing (1962) have argued that lowland populations in the northern Philippines used the interior of the Philippine Cordillera to avoid subjugation; Paredes (2013) documented the active resistance of indigenous groups (Lumads) in the mountains of southern Philippines against the Spanish; and, Scott (2009) articulated the model in terms of Mainland Southeast Asian Polities and hinterlands. These ideas of isolation and refugia are widely recognized in the literature, but has sometimes led to the inaccurate presumption that people who are out of reach of the colonial machinery are untainted by foreign culture.

Recent archaeological studies (Dillehay 2014; Palka 2005) have provided evidence to refute ideas of isolation and cultural stagnation. In reality, the zones of refuge are dynamic landscapes where substantial culture change occurred in parallel with areas that were under direct colonial administration. Palka’s (2005) work among the Lacandon Maya (Guatemala) is a great example that breaks the artificial difference between the colonized and the uncolonized. Palka documented culture change over a 200-year period that argued against the popular misconception that the Lacandon Maya was isolated and thus were untainted descendants of the Classic Maya. By examining the material culture obtained from Lacandon Maya settlements, he contends that unconquered Lacandon Maya had extensive interaction beyond the frontier, in contrast to the conquered Maya whose options were limited (Palka 2005, pp. 124–162, 281).

Dillehay (2014), in his investigations among the Araucanians (or Mapuche, as they are called today) of Chile, has also espoused the idea of emerging political complexity to successfully resist the expansion of the Iberian empire in southcentral Chile. He argues that the alliance of various Araucanian communities resulted in a proto-state that he refers to as the “Estado” (Dillehay 2014, pp. 3–8). The Mapuche were never under Spanish administration and were only assimilated by the Chilean State at the turn of the twentieth century (Dillehay 2014, p. 8). He calls this alliance and the resulting polity teleoscopic: “an extensible or compressible structure by moving and fitting overlapping kinship units at increasingly higher scales of religiopolitical and socio-economic organization. It transformationally and rapidly expanded from local, more domestic, patrilineal communities at the lowest level to regional, more public, and powerful patriarchical communities under war leaders at the highest level” (Dillehay 2014, p. 7).

The Mapuche study is, thus, an example that provides an indication of emerging political centralization that parallels the political changes of those who were under the colonial administration. The Lacandon Maya findings also offer evidence of rapid political and economic transformations outside of the colonial regime. These examples provide a clear indication that the distinction between the colonized and the uncolonized are misleading. These influences of cultural entanglements are also observed in Africa among groups who were not in direct contact with Europeans. Ogundiran’s (2001a, b, 2002a, b) work in the Yoruba-Edo region of Nigeria and Stahl’s (1999, 2001) investigations in west central Ghana have documented intense culture change as a response to European expansionist aims. Ogundiran (2001b), in particular, focused on social memory and political economic changes in the context of Atlantic trade.

The examples above fit the concept that I refer to as pericolonialism. Although the Spanish did not conquer the groups mentioned above, the economic and political changes observed are analogous to what ensued among those that were under direct colonial control. The concept also provides a decolonizing methodological approach that breaks dichotomies and colonial categories; it provides a nuanced understanding of the radical changes brought by culture contact, similar to what Liebmann (2012, p. 34) outlined in his call for the revising of the chronologies developed for North American archaeology in the early twentieth century. Moreover, pericolonial archaeology offers to utilize a multiscalar approach (Lightfoot 1995) that will contextualize the short- and long-term cultural histories of indigenous peoples affected by colonialism (Silliman 2012, p. 113).

The Pericolonial Setting of the Ifugao

The Ifugao are known for their extensive and elaborate rice terraces, which are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Ifugao constructed these terraces in rugged terrain as high as 2,000 m above-sea-level. Terrace construction, use, and maintenance require complex community management. The complexity of terrace construction, use, and maintenance has led to the proposition by certain observers of a long-history of the Ifugao terraces—a 2,000-year old inception proposed by Barton (1919) and Beyer (1955) (Table 1). My work in the region points to a more recent origin (Acabado 2009, 2010, 2012a, b, c, 2013, 2015), suggesting that the introduction of wet-rice varieties in the northern Philippine highlands post-dates the arrival of the Spanish at ca. 1575 in northern Luzon.

Table 1 Age estimations proposed for the inception of the Ifugao Rice Terraces
Full size table

The Spanish called the various Cordillera ethnolinguistic groups as the Ygollotes (or Igorots), borrowing from lowland description of highland peoples during conquest (golot means mountain chain, and the prefix I, means “people of” or “dwelling in” (Scott 1966, p. 155). To this day, this exonym is still the general ethnic label for many ethnic groups in the Cordillera Administrative Region. Present-day Ifugaos and Kalingas, however, do not consider themselves as Igorots. These Cordilleran groups share similarities in language, religion, subsistence patterns (particularly, wet-rice cultivation in mountain terraces), and most of them were successful in repelling multiple military campaigns by the Spanish. The apparent successful resistance to Spanish military campaigns has earned the Cordillerans the label of tribus independientes (Florendo 1994, p. 75).

In Ifugao, the successful resistance against Spanish colonization was due to the adoption of wet-rice agriculture that consolidated Ifugao populations economically and politically. These were conscious decisions to concentrate power to political actors that have the capacity to organize the community. I hypothesize that sixteenth-/seventeenth-century Ifugao chose strategically to move to the interior of the Philippine Cordillera that allowed them to avoid repeated attempts by the Spanish colonial government to put them under the Spanish crown. My work in the Philippine highlands provides evidence that pericolonial populations (indigenous populations on the fringes of the Spanish colonial reach) developed complex political systems that were meant to deal with community power relationships and other indigenous groups (Panich and Schneider 2014; Rodriguez-Alegria 2012), and that they did so in response to the Spanish colonial presence.

A consensus among archaeologists exists on how economic intensification develops and operates in state societies; however, the same cannot be said for non-stratified societies (Stark 1995, p. 219), such as the Ifugao. Among stratified societies, economic intensification is linked to state formation due to increasing demand with decreasing resources. Status competition through wealth accumulation founded on control over the means of production (Blanton et al. 1996; Brumfiel 1980) becomes the bases for economic intensification.

On the other hand, explanations about economic intensification among non-stratified societies are numerous: demographic pressure, locational circumscription, economic impoverishment, technological change, incentives of the market, environmental deterioration or unpredictability, reciprocal exchange demands within kin-based social systems, and competition for status (Arnold 1985; Boserup 1965; Cobb 1993; Geertz 1963; Knapp 1990; Netting 1990; Nichols 1987). Among the Ifugao, economic intensification appears to have been caused by demographic pressure (migration) and political transformation (reorganization in the face of conquest and colonialism).

The adoption of wet-rice agriculture also corresponded with increases in prestige animals (domesticated pigs and water buffalo) and tradeware ceramics. Statistical analyses (discussed in a later section) indicate that these frequency increases are non-random. The archaeological record, thus, does not support the contention that the Ifugao were isolated from the Philippine lowlands during the Spanish colonial period. While it is documented that it was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century that the Spanish colonial government was able to establish missions in the present town of Kiangan, the earlier establishment of garrisons in the adjacent lowland towns in Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela, influenced activities in the highlands.

The significant increase in the appearance of imported tradeware ceramics in Ifugao began about the mid-1700s, long after the maritime exchange in the South China Sea that began in the Philippines around the eleventh century. In the Old Kiyyangan Village, this development signified an active interaction between the Ifugao and lowland traders who were settlers brought by the Spanish to populate their garrison towns.

Eventually the Ifugao also raided these lowland towns since these were their customary hunting grounds. These attacks precipitated the eventual burning of the Old Kiyyangan Village as part of Spanish Col. Galvey’s punitive assaults in 1832 (Scott 1974, pp. 216–219). As a result of this punitive expedition, the Old Kiyyangan Village inhabitants abandoned their village and moved to the present-day town of Kiangan.

The earliest evidence of human activity in the Old Kiyyangan Village is ca. 1000 CE, based on radiocarbon determinations. These original inhabitants were subsisting on taro (Acabado 2013, 2015) and had a very limited number of exotic goods. By ca. 1600 CE, we see the emergence of wet-rice agriculture via the terraces and the rapid expansion of the village. The 186 houses reported by Fray Molano in 1801, indicated a population that would have reached a thousand individuals – a very large village, even by lowland Philippine standards. In addition, Molano recorded between 10 and 40 houses in adjoining villages.

Significantly, this period also saw the disappearance of some 60 villages in the adjacent Magat Valley. In 1739, Fray Antonio Campo listed about 100 villages there. Less than half (40) of these villages remained 50 years later (Antolin 1970). Villages that were located in the highlands of the Cordillera (at least on the Benguet side—listed by the Monforte expedition) were still present in the twentieth century (W. Scott 1974, p. 175). Antolin recorded a specific case where the entire population of the Matunu Valley withdrew deeper into the interior of the Cordillera, except for those that converted to Christianity and were assimilated in the lowland towns. Antolin attributes this withdrawal to the presence of the Fort San Juan Bautista in the town of Aritao, one of the lowland settlements in the foot of the Cordillera Central.

Newson (2009, pp. 254, 257) has argued that the decline in the population in the Cagayan Valley during the early colonial period could be attributed to epidemics (which had plagued the region even before the arrival of the Spanish) with rates of infection intensifying during and after conquest. Newson’s study indicates that up to about 45 % of the population declined in the region between 1565 and 1600. The whole of the Philippines itself saw a population loss of as much as 37 %. In contrast to the New World, the introduction of Old World diseases was not the significant contributor to demographic decline in the Philippines. Rather, improved transportation and communications due to conquest facilitated the spread of infectious diseases.

The conquest, demographic decline, Spanish occupation of the central valleys of northern Luzon, and the Cordilleran practice of moving into the interior of the mountain range during raids, would have stimulated the movement of people into areas that were out of reach of the foreign forces. Unfortunately, no figures exist for population numbers in Ifugao during this period, although Newson estimates that Ifugaos would have numbered between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals during the early nineteenth century (Newson 2009, p. 238). When the Spanish established their garrisons in the adjacent lowland towns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they resettled Ilocano (lowland inhabitants of the western coast of Luzon) populations to these areas.

The movement to the interior of the Cordillera constitutes a form of active resistance against the Spanish’s occupation of the lowlands. J. Scott (2009, p. ix) has made a similar argument regarding the so-called Zomia area of the mainland Southeast Asian massif—all the lands at altitudes above roughly 300 m all the way from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to northeastern India and traversing five Southeast Asian nations (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma). It was a conscious choice that involved political and economic consolidation. Similar consolidation allowed the Ifugao successfully to turn back repeated attempts by the Spanish to establish a permanent presence in the highlands.

This success, however, became the basis for the nationalist theory of the Ifugao as isolated, an idea that is still dominant in the Filipino consciousness. Far from being isolated, I contend that the shift to wet-rice cultivation and the strengthening of their economic foundation made it possible for the Ifugao to consolidate politically.

In another part of the Philippines, Paredes (2013, pp. 150, 165) has explored the responses of the Lumad (indigenous non-Muslim peoples of the southern island of Mindanao) to the attempts of the Spanish to incorporate the various Mindanao groups under the colonial umbrella. According to her ethnohistoric and ethnographic work, the Lumad took advantage of the opportunity to engage Spanish colonial power to counteract the Moro (Muslim) domination of the southern Philippines which they found oppressive. This finding forces us to rethink the dominant perspectives of the “Hispanization” of supposedly “un-Hispanized” upland groups.

The responses of the Ifugao and the Lumad are comparable since the strategies that they employed were advantageous to both their communities. The Spanish colonial presence had a major impact on their lives: it changed the way they lived and how they thought of themselves. Both groups appear in the twentieth-first century to be radically different from Hispanized Filipinos and these Filipinos imagine the Spanish never affected them. But the Spanish impact was profound. For both groups, these responses laid the groundwork for their subsequent ethnic identity and provided them with the necessary shift in social organization that allowed them to confront dominant groups—the Moro for the Lumad and the Spanish for the Ifugao.

History of Resistance in the Cordillera

The initial intrusion of the Spanish in the Cordillera highlands was encouraged by information about the presence of gold in the area (Regpala 1990; Scott 1970). Their first forays into the region in 1572 were a failure due to the ruggedness of the topography. However, this activity allowed the Spaniards to establish camps in the lowland areas of Pangasinan and Ilocos (Keesing 1962) and later, Cagayan Valley. From these camps, Spanish troops and their Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese mercenaries would repeatedly carry out expeditions into the Cordilleras and the Igorots would repulse these incursions.

Highland resistance was widely documented in the historical records. Various Spanish military expeditions in 1591, 1608, 1635, and 1663 in the Benguet area were unsuccessful (Phelan 1959, p. 2). W. Scott (1970, p. 706) credits the strategy of retreating deeper into the Cordillera as an effective resistance by the Igorots.

It was not until 1787 that the colonial government was able to set up an administrative region in the Cordillera, though only in Lepanto (Benguet). According to W. Scott (1974, pp. 3–4), it was neither gold nor the gospel that brought the Spanish in full force to the region in the 1700s, but tobacco. During this period, the colonial government imposed a monopoly on tobacco production and distribution in the territory. The Igorots did not comply with this edict and grew their own tobacco or ambushed shipments of these products and sell them in Ilocos or Pangasinan. This prompted the colonial administration to send forces to the area. This final thrust was able to subjugate some parts of Lepanto, comprising Benguet and Bontoc, and the lowlands of Nueva Vizcaya and Cagayan Valley. The territories of Ifugao, Kalinga, Apayao, Tinguian, and Bontoc, however, were not successfully placed under the Spanish crown. Only the Kankanai and Ibaloi were completely controlled by these forces, probably because of the proximity to the lowlands of these groups.

The establishment of the Spanish colonial administration in the area also brought schools and missionaries in the region. These lowlands camps were constantly attacked by nearby highland groups. Regpala (1990, pp. 117–118), exemplifying the perceived distinction of Igorots, gives credit to the war-like nature of the Cordillera people and geography of the area in their successful defiance of the Spanish efforts. I contend though, that the emphasis on land with its associated subsistence and prestige importance would give the Cordillera people a reason to fight against foreign attempts to place their territories under control. This assertion was also illustrated in Barton’s Autobiographies of Three Pagans (1938) and Half-Way Sun (1930), where he describes Ifugaos defending themselves against neighboring groups who try to access their lands.

The establishment of the Spanish administration in Lepanto (present-day Benguet) ushered in a lasting consequence to the relationship between the lowland Filipinos and the Cordillera inhabitants. W. Scott (1974, p. 7) argues that the dichotomy that exists today between lowland Filipino’s dominance on the one hand, and the continued defiance of the Igorots against outside hegemony and misconception of primitiveness on the other hand, can be attributed to the Spanish aims.

Ifugao Ethnohistory and Ethnography

The first recorded Spanish direct contact with Ifugao populations happened in 1736 when Father Diego de la Torre set out to establish a road to Cagayan (Conklin 1980, p. 37; Fernandez and Juan 1969). In the 1750s, Spanish troops reached Kiangan in response to the head-hunting raids by the Ifugao against Spain’s Filipino subjects (Jenista 1987, p. 4) in the Cagayan Valley. This was followed by repeated attempts by Spanish forces and their Hispanized Filipino mercenaries to subjugate the Ifugao but the former was always met with resistance and one sent in 1767 was severely routed and forced to retreat to the lowlands (Conklin 1980, p. 37; Scott 1970) and in 1793, Spanish troops were met by Ifugao warriors wearing metal breastplates (Scott 1970, p. 703).

In 1801, Fray Juan Molano made contact with the village of Kiyyangan without a military escort. He was received peacefully by the Kiyyangan people and was allowed to observe the daily life of the settlement. Later contacts were also fueled by missionization (Keesing 1962, pp. 295–297) rather than militarily. These missions describe principal Ifugao villages as having 20 to 40 houses. The settlement of Kiyyangan however, as mentioned earlier had 186 houses in 1801. Antolin (1970) estimates that Kiyyangan district (the main Kiyyangan Village and four adjacent settlements) had a population of 6,000 individuals.

Contact period accounts of Ifugao culture (Antolin 1970) mention a kinship-based sociopolitical organization. A similar kinship organization is also observed by ethnographic studies by Dulawan (2001, p. 5) and Conklin (1980, p. 5). Dulawan (2001) described this kinship system as bilateral, a system that reaches up to the fourth ascending generation and includes dead ancestors. These ancestors play a vital function in the everyday life of the Ifugao, from their cosmology, to politics, to subsistence (Barton 1922; Scott 1974). The structure of the Ifugao culture underlies an abiding concern with the competitive development of land for terracing and rice production; with elaborate traditional rituals and feasts that on all occasions involve interaction with deceased kinsmen and, a deep interest in status and rank and inherited wealth (Conklin 1980, p. 5).

The Ifugao social organization is considered as ranked, with the elite (called the kadangyan) owning most of the productive rice fields. Those who do not own rice fields, and thus, do not have access to rice throughout the year are called the nawotot (the poor). Other members of the community who owned rice lands but do not have enough prestige to be considered as kadangyan are called the tagu.

Customarily, the ranking in Ifugao society is important in their agricultural system. The kadangyan owns the rice fields and they control access and distribution of rice as food and ritual item. The nawotwot would need to work in the fields of the kadangyan for them to receive rice as a form of payment for their labor. The nawotwot are also associated with swidden cultivation, where they obtain most of their carbohydrate needs, particularly from sweet potato. Indeed, the term nawotwot is synonymous with root crop eater.

The nature of Ifugao social organization is also important in the political arena: political power is acquired through fighting, diplomatic, and oratorical skills. There were no mention of formal leadership in Spanish accounts, but ethnographic investigations have described ritual village heads called the tomona (Acabado 2013; Conklin 1980, p. 110), who are mostly associated with the agricultural system.

The nature of sociopolitical organization of contact-period Ifugao is important to understanding how they were able to resist multiple attempts by the Spanish to assimilate them into the colonial regime. Even when the Kiyyangan Village was sacked and burned by Col. Galvey in 1832, the Spanish were never able to establish permanent presence in the region. Ifugao communities were (and still are to some extent) organized by extended family. Blood relations are paramount but affinal kinship also plays a huge part in community bonds.

The ability to muster enough forces to repeal Spanish raids would have required the establishment of alliances with neighboring settlements whom Kiyyangan inhabitants have kinship relationships. The relatively dense settlement of Kiyyangan Village also suggests population increase and Kiyyangan would have served as the political and military center in the region.

Archaeological Investigations at the Old Kiyyangan Village

The Ifugao Archaeological Project focused on the Old Kiyyangan Village during the 2012, 2013, and 2015 field seasons. The determination to excavate the site was based on Ifugao community’s request to investigate the area that is mentioned in their oral history as the putative origin of the Ifugao people. The site is currently a rice field, which is unusually flat compared to the terraced fields that dominate the landscape of the region, and no visible evidence of a settlement exists on the surface, except for unusual field walls that separate rice paddy fields. According to one of the landowners, the field walls were once paving stones. The paving stones indicate that the area was a village site. She adds that it was after the Second World War that her parents bought the property and she remembers helping piling the stones to make way for the construction of rice paddies.

Generational memory has already forgotten when the village was last inhabited, but an American-period document (1898–1946) mentions the Village of Otbobon (which is another name for the Kiyyangan Village) as being located elsewhere until 1869 (Record Historico 1911, p. 2). The town of Kiangan today is about 4 km from the Old Kiyyangan Site. The Old Kiyyangan settlement would have been abandoned between 1832 (the sacking of the village by Col. Galvey) and 1869 for still unknown reasons.

The IAP has opened 17 2 × 2 m excavation units, with depths the range between 1.5 and 2 m (to culturally sterile soils) in the last three field seasons. Three of the units were extended to cover the hypothesized footprint of houses and a buried irrigation ditch. Ten shovel test probes that had depths up to a meter were also utilized to determine the North–south and East extent of the village. Based on spatial information obtained from the excavations, Trenches 3 to 15 were within the area of the village that is dated between 600 and 200 years ago, while Trenches 1, 2, 7, 16, and 17 appear to be on areas that were extended later when the village was expanding (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
figure 2

The Old Kiyyangan Village Site map showing excavation units (T) and shovel test probes (STPs)

Full size image

The work of the IAP suggests that the arrival of the Spanish in the region coincided with the expansion of the village and the observed economic intensification (Acabado 2013, 2015). Excavation units provided evidence of three occupational layers and three distinct pottery assemblages: exclusively earthenware jars in the lowest layer (Layer III); cooking and earthenware water jars, and tradeware ceramics in the second (Layer II) occupational layer; and, cooking jars in the upper (Layer I) layer. The excavations also unearthed locally produced and imported beads, a crocodile tooth, imported metal adornments, and infant burials. These findings attest to the active participation of the Ifugao community in pre-colonial interaction in the Philippines.

Bulk soil, chard residue, and skeletal radiocarbon dates, microbotanical datasets recovered from two trenches, and pollen, phytolith, and starch analyses of sherd residues from three trenches suggest that the site was used as a taro (Colocasia esculenta) field as early as 1000 years BP (Figs. 3 and 4) (Acabado 2012c). The establishment of the village is placed at ca. 900 BP. This is supported by the recovered earthenware ceramics from the lower layers and dating of recovered human remains. Preliminary analysis of pottery recovered from the site displayed a high degree of variation indicating that it was manufactured at the household level and most likely produced when the need arose. The pottery forms and use-wear indicate domestic use. Temper was uniform throughout the occupation layers.

Fig. 3
figure 3

South wall profile of Trench 3 with radiocarbon determination and soil micromorphology analyses results

Full size image
Fig. 4
figure 4

Phytolith percentage and pollen/starch diagram from Ifugao, Philippines (+ = found after count, ++ = present in small amounts). Microbotanical analysis was carried out by Dr. Mark Horrocks (Microfossil, Inc.) (Figure from Horrocks 2013)

Full size image

Microbotanical samples from the Old Kiyyangan Village indicate numerous well-preserved phytoliths (see Fig. 4) (Horrocks 2013), with grass leaf phytoliths, almost entirely bulliform/elongate types, overwhelmingly dominating all assemblages. Although some types of grass phytoliths can be confidently attributed to rice, in this case none of these were identified, suggesting that the profile deposits were not subjected to intensive rice cultivation.

Two types of starch were identified in the Ifugao samples. The first type, consistent with the corm of taro (an aroid), was found in one of the potsherd samples. The morphology of the other type encompasses starch storage organs of several Philippine starch crops, namely three other aroids (Alocasia macrorrhiza, Amorphophallus paeoniifolius and Cyrtosperma merkusii), arrowroot (Tacca leontopetaloides) and breadfruit (Artocarpus altilus). Starch grains of these species are difficult to differentiate. Both types of starch are present in very small amounts, so this evidence should be treated cautiously.

Furthermore, organic residue analysis of the charred sherds recovered from the site and macrobotanical analyses also indicate the absence of wet-rice (cultivation, processing, and cooking) at the Old Kiyyangan Village prior to Spanish colonization (ca. 1565 CE) of the Philippines. Results of the residue analysis point to the cultivation, processing, and cooking of other starchy sources, such as taro, yam, breadfruit, arrowfruit, palms, and an unidentified C4 crop (Eusebio et al. 2015).

Results of the excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village provide multiple lines of evidence that challenge assumptions of a long chronology for the rice terraces. The investigations at the site are also important to understanding the impact of European colonization on local practices in Southeast Asia. There is unequivocal data that indicates that the shift to wet-rice cultivation and subsequent rapid expansion of the Old Kiyyangan Village is attributed to Spanish presence in the adjacent lowlands. Results from other areas in Ifugao also provide post-conquest dates for the construction of the rice terraces (Acabado 2009; Maher 1973).

The shift to wet-rice cultivation would have required a drastic alteration in Ifugao agricultural practices and social organization (Greenland 1997). Wet-rice varieties need significantly more water than wet-taro varieties and are more prone to seasonal changes. Wet-rice production is also dependent on the agricultural cycle, guided by both weather patterns and social scheduling. As opposed to wet-taro production, wet-rice farming entails strict scheduling and stringent controlling of the irrigation system.

The shift to rice cultivation was accompanied by an increase in pig and water buffalo consumption (Table 2). Amano (2013) conducted the analysis of the faunal assemblage where he identified eight major taxa in the record. Analyses of Trench 3 faunal remains (which represented 78.3 % of all animal bone fragments recovered from the site [n = 1,416] in 2012) suggest that the Philippine deer (Rusa marriana) was the primary source of protein in all stratigraphic units, pigs were also represented in all stratigraphic units, but they were low in numbers in the lowest layer. The predominance of deer as the main protein source, in contrast to the low number of pigs, in the site is surprising even when the Old Kiyyangan inhabitants shifted to intensive rice production. This finding directly correlates with ethnographic information that domesticated pigs in Ifugao are meant for rituals and feasting and not for regular consumption. In addition, domestic pigs in early agricultural Southeast Asian societies are posited to have played a bigger and more important role in feasting and ritual than subsistence (Amano et al. 2013; Hayden 2001).

Table 2 Distribution of taxa across the stratigraphic units of Trench 3 (NISP) and the frequency change chi square statistic of the faunal remains recovered from the Old Kiyyangan Village. Values: x 2 = 16.722; df: 2; p-value: o.0002. The result is significant at p < .05
Full size table

The increase of pig and water buffalo consumption could suggest intensification of trade with lowlands or increase in population to support breeding. Although there is no current estimate for pre-contact population, the observed increase in meat consumption could indicate population increase and/or intensification of conspicuous consumption through rituals and feasting. In Ifugao, water buffalo is not used as traction animal for rice cultivation as the terraced paddy fields are too steep for the animal to navigate.

The rapid expansion and possible population growth in the Old Kiyyangan Village is further indicated by the shift to rice agriculture. There is also a sudden increase in utilitarian earthenware and tradeware ceramic sherds recovered from the site (Fig. 5). This frequency change appears to be statistically correlated (Table 3). The increase occurred at ca. 1600, right when the Spanish initially ventured into the northern Philippines. The increase in utilitarian earthenware sherds appears to be correlated with increase in deer the increase in deer consumption. Likewise, the increases in tradeware ceramics (porcelain and stoneware) are correlated with the increase in carabao remains. In addition, there also appears a correlation between in tradeware ceramics and consumption of major fauna (pigs, carabao, and deer) (Table 4).

Fig. 5
figure 5

Earthenware sherd count in the Old Kiyyangan Village (N = 15,090)

Full size image
Table 3 Utilitarian earthenware and imported tradeware ceramics raw counts and frequency change chi statistic from the Old Kiyyangan Village. Values: x 2 = 22.063; df = 1; p-value = 0.0000. The result is significant at p-value < .05
Full size table
Table 4 Chi-square calculation results on the significance of frequency change in vessel and faunal remains From Layer 1 to Layer 3 in the Old Kiyyangan Village. All chi-square values are significant at p ≤ 0.05 level of significance
Full size table

The expansion of the village was accompanied by the appearance of tradeware ceramics (stoneware and porcelain), all of which were imported to the Philippines from elsewhere in Asia (Figs. 6, 7, and 8). These items were brought by foreign traders along the coasts of the Philippines, starting around the tenth century (Patanne 1996, 1972, p. 267). However, as this work suggests, evidence indicates that these materials were introduced late into the highlands.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Examples of stoneware and porcelain sherds recovered from the Old Kiyyangan Village site. Bottom pictures are heirloom stoneware and porcelain jars

Full size image
Fig. 7
figure 7

Porcelain sherd count from the Old Kiyyangan Village

Full size image
Fig. 8
figure 8

Stoneware sherd count from the Old Kiyyangan Village

Full size image

During the Spanish colonial period, blue-and-white porcelain vessels (primarily Ming Dynasty ceramics, ca. fourteenth-seventeenth centuries) were introduced to the region. Access to these goods in the Old Kiyyangan Village was limited, with only five of the 17 excavation units showing significant numbers of these materials. The low count of the tradeware ceramics in the archaeological record of the Old Kiyyangan Village (compared to earthenware ceramics) could be attributed to the high cost, prestige and value attached to these materials (Lebar 1975, p. 81). Present-day wealthy Ifugao families still possess stoneware and porcelain jars as heirloom goods (Fig. 9). The low numbers of tradeware ceramics in Layer 2 could be a product of intrusion from mixing, but it is highly likely that these items were being traded in the region before the Spanish colonization. Contact with the lowlands and the upstream movement of imported goods are supported by the presence of exotic glass beads that are dated to ca. Cal 1350 CE. Nonetheless, there was a drastic increase in the presence of these goods after the 1600s.

Fig. 9
figure 9

Heirloom stoneware and porcelain jars in Ifugao owned by Catalina Balajao (Photo credit: Rae Macapagal)

Full size image

Intensification of economic activity appears to have been one of the cultural strategies that allowed the Ifugao to fight off military conquests. Data that support increases in access to exotic goods are based on grave goods in infant burials and quantities of tradeware ceramics among different households. The rapid increase in raw counts of tradeware ceramics coincided with the period of Spanish conquest of the northern Philippines.

Interpretation

Archaeological findings from multiple sites in Ifugao (Banaue, Hapao, and Kiyyangan) significantly support the model that rice-terracing activities in the upland Cordillera of the Philippines are much younger than previously thought. Paleoethnobotanical datasets from the region have so far yielded zero evidence for wet-rice cultivation that predates the 1600s. Although I acknowledge the notion that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, there are multiple absences that together fail to establish an earlier presence of wet-rice in Ifugao: no weeds associated with wet-rice ecology, starch residue from cooking pots are from tubers, and no rice phytoliths in layers that are earlier than the 1600s.

What is clear from the findings at the Old Kiyyangan Village Site is that the introduction of wet-rice varieties in the suite of crops cultivated in the upland region coincided with the initial presence of the Spanish in the adjacent lowland. The shift to wet-rice production during this period was also accompanied by a rapid increase in tradeware and utilitarian ceramics. As the previous section illustrated, it appears that economic intensification (craft production, wet-rice cultivation, and trade) occurred simultaneously soon after the Spanish push to the northern Philippines. These changes would have been associated with settlement expansion and political changes.

Wet-rice cultivation would have fed more population compared to taro, which was documented to be the main cultivar before the adoption of wet-rice. Wet-rice would have also allowed the Ifugao to intensify trading with lowland groups since rice is a major trading item before and during conquest. More importantly, rice produced in the irrigated terraced fields of Ifugao provided the necessary supply for ritual feasting. Among the Ifugao, rituals and feasts bond the community, observed even today.

According to initial Spanish reports, only two regions in the Philippines had active irrigated rice paddies in the early years of contact—Tuy (present-day Nueva Vizcaya in northern Luzon) and the Bikol region (the southernmost provinces of the island of Luzon) (Blair and Robertson 1903). Nueva Vizcaya is contiguous to Ifugao territory. The Magat Valley, the presumed homeland of the Ifugao according to Keesing (1962), is located in the general area of Tuy. The recent findings in Ifugao strongly support Keesing’s argument.

Reid’s (1991) linguistic analysis of rice terms in Ifugao indicates that wet-rice farmers in the Cordillera were established wet-rice cultivators when they began the project, rather than creating it from scratch. The analysis suggests that when faced with the rugged terrain of the Cordilleras, the settlers already possessed the knowledge and technology to construct walled fields, divert water, and select the best variety of rice suitable to higher elevations. Reid however, points to the northwestern region of the Philippines as the linguistic origin of the Ifugao language; whereas our ethnohistoric and archaeological findings place the Ifugao population’s origin on the northeastern valleys of the Philippines (Magat Valley).

The shift to wet-rice cultivation (and by definition, wet-rice production is a form of intensification) could have been a response to the opportunities presented by intensified trade with the lowlands. The timing however (agricultural and trade intensification), occurred simultaneously and was also accompanied by evidence of elaboration of social differentiation through feasts and rituals. The recovered water buffalo remains (carabao) attests to the rise of the elite in Ifugao. Water buffalos are associated with the elevation of elites into higher status kadangyan. There is a total absence of water buffalo (carabao) remains before Cal 1650 CE. Frequency changes in all of the variables tested (earthenware, tradeware, and major fauna) are statistically significant.

Furthermore, except for imported beads, no other lowland materials were documented in the village before the Spanish arrival in the lowlands at the end of the sixteenth century. I argue that the pre-contact highland population in the Old Kiyyangan Village was related to the Magat Valley groups, perhaps the source of their imported beads. The arrival of the Spanish pushed the lowland groups to the highlands where they settled in and adjacent to the Old Kiyyangan Village. Between 1650 and 1700, the village expanded accompanied by elaboration of social differentiation through rice land holdings and the ability of the elites to sponsor feasts and rituals. What occurred in the Old Kiyyangan Village soon after the initial presence of the Spanish in the northern Luzon was not cultural stagnation, rather, we see substantial culture change that parallel those of the conquered groups.

The next step in addressing the subject of indigenous responses to colonialism in Ifugao is to undertake a survey of the nearby lowland towns that were established by the Spanish. These towns were established to counter the Ifugaos who were raiding the north–south supply route of the Spanish. Data from such sites can provide information regarding subsistence shifts (particularly, the adoption of wet-rice cultivation), changes in settlement patterns, and the eventual dominance of Ilokano (lowland ethnolinguistic group) speakers who were resettled by the Spanish to populate the garrison towns.

Conclusion: History, Anthropology, and Heritage

Pericolonial archaeology hopes to break the false dichotomy between the colonized and the uncolonized. The concept also provides a decolonizing methodology that forefronts the capacity of indigenous populations to resist subjugation. Similar to what have been documented elsewhere (Hart et al. 2012), pericolonial archaeology continues the tradition of promoting the importance of highlighting the capabilities of peoples whom Wolf (1997) calls the “peoples without history.” In the Ifugao case, their history was written by colonialist scholarship that relegated them to the sidelines of historical events. They were considered, and still are, passive observers of written history. The archaeological record tells us a different story. It appears that the Ifugao strengthened their economic foundation (as supported by shift to wet-rice production and dramatic increase in tradeware ceramics) as a strategy to counter the threat of subjugation. Access to rice land holdings (and wet-rice itself), exotic goods (imported beads and tradeware ceramics), and increases in feasting (as shown by water buffalo and pig remains) point to political intensification as a conscious effort to organize the population to fight off repeated attempts by the Spanish to place them under the colonial umbrella. Similar to what Paredes (2013) ethnographically documented among the Lumads, northern highland Filipinos made conscious decisions to confront and contain colonialism, an observation that early Philippine scholars/historians failed to recognize.

As mentioned previously, cultivation of wet-rice requires a social organization drastically different from wet taro cultivation due to its intensive labor demands (Greenland 1997). Wet-rice production is also dependent on climatic seasons as well as water distribution. The shift to wet-rice production in Ifugao that coincided with the Spanish conquest of the northern Philippines suggests a drastic social organizational change.

My work in Ifugao provides another evidence that the effects of colonialism extend beyond the colonized regions. As my investigation in Ifugao show, economic intensification and political elaboration appear to have been the strategic response of the Ifugao. These findings run counter to the perceived passiveness of indigenous peoples during conquest, leading us to rethink Philippine history with regard to its pericolonial areas. Pericolonial archaeology brings to the fore indigenous peoples who have been portrayed to as inconsequential in the Spanish conquest/colonization process. Our archaeological findings make a strong case to the contrary. Populations on the fringes of colonization inventively adjust (economically and politically) to counter the threats of colonization. Although colonial influences in language and religion are not discernible among present-day Ifugaos, the material culture points to an intense engagement.

The focus on pericolonial areas provides another dimension to a nuanced understanding of the processes involved in colonialism. In this article, I defined pericolonial as the areas where military conquests were unsuccessful, but the effects of the conquest in nearby regions and the subsequent colonialism appear to have changed the lives of the indigenous populations. In this sense, colonialism was accomplished without colonization (Silliman 2005, p. 58), which I consider as the primary feature of pericolonial areas.

Pericolonial archaeology also highlights the capacity of indigenous populations to adjust to colonial pressures. Far from the lowlander stereotype of Ifugaos as warriors who will fight to the death, what is observed in the Philippines highlands is a conscious effort to deal with colonialism in more complex and sophisticated ways: a strategy that has also been reflected in other pericolonial regions in the Philippines. Such studies links history, identity, and heritage.