S51-3

Infant Jar Burials in Lal-lo, Cagayan Valley, Philippines

Tanaka Kazuhiko1 & Ame Garong2

1Department of Cultural Properties, Tsurumi University, Japan

2Archaeology Division, National Museum of the Philippines, Philippines

The long tradition of jar burials in the Philippines has been researched and studied by many scholars. For example, Fox (Fox 1970) recorded a jar burial tradition extending from the Late Neolithic to the Developed Metal Age through his excavations of cave sites in the Tabon area of Palawan Island. The wide distribution of similar burial jars and associated materials has also been researched and studied by many other scholars. For example, Solheim pointed out the similarities between the pottery excavated in the Kalanay Cave in Masbate Island, Philippines and the ceramics found in cave sites on Samui Island, Thailand. Recently the excavation of the Hoa Diem site in Vietnam by Yamagata (Yamagata 2010) revealed similar to that excavated in Kalanay Cave, Masbate Island. The people buried in the jars at these sites are usually adults or of unknown age. Fox (Fox 1959) excavated the burial jars containing infants in his excavations in Calatagan sites in Batangas Province in Luzon Island. However, only a few scholars have studied infant burials in the Philippines. In this presentation, we focus on infant jar burials excavated during our research in San Lorenzo III shell midden site, Lal-lo, Cagayan, Northern Luzon. These infant jar burials are contemporaneous with the blue-and-white porcelain of the Ming dynasty in Layer II.