S21-12

Historiography of Philippine Bioarchaeology: Current and Future Directions

Sarah Agatha Villaluz1, Gretchen Velarde1, Melandri Vlok2, 3

1Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines – Diliman, Philippines

2Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, University of Sydney, Australia

3Department of Anatomy, University of Otago, New Zealand

This presentation reviews bioarchaeological research completed in the Philippines to date in order to highlight those areas that would likely be productive lines of enquiry in the future. We describe Philippine bioarchaeological research its beginnings in mortuary excavation to the expansion into the scientific fields of biomolecular analyses such as radiocarbon dating, aDNA, and stable isotopes. While archaeology in the Philippines has been focused predominantly on mortuary sites, there has been a dearth of bioarchaeological research into the excavated human remains themselves. We discuss some of the sociopolitical challenges to bioarchaeological research in the Philippines and suggest prospective approaches. We conclude by suggesting there are four major areas where bioarchaeological research could contribute to major research problems in the Asia-Pacific region: 1) migration of pre-Austronesian and Austronesian populations into the Pacific; 2) the origins and antiquity of tropical infectious diseases including yaws, leprosy and malaria; 3) the impacts of western colonization on the health of inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, and importantly; 4) sovereignty of ancestral data from human skeletal remains and the renegotiation of collaborative power dynamics between local and international institutions.