Bong Dizon and the Batanes Islands Archaeological Project – A Retrospective

Peter Bellwood

The joint Australian and Philippine archaeological research project in the Batanes Islands was undertaken between 2001 and 2007, funded by the Australian Research Council and the resources of the National Museum of the Philippines and the Archaeological Studies Program of the University of the Philippines, Diliman Campus. Bong Dizon was the leader of the Filipino team members, and some of those team members will be present at this 23rd IPPA Congress in Yogyakarta. During the Batanes Project, surveys and excavations were undertaken on the islands of Batan, Sabtang, Itbayat, and Siayan, and the results were published in a volume edited by Bellwood and Dizon in 2013 (ANU Press: Terra Australis vol. 40). Twenty‑five years have now passed since the project began, and I wish to revive memories of Bong’s essential contribution to its success, review the main archaeological findings, and discuss how the Batanes discoveries stand today in the search for the ancestry of the modern Filipino people. This search involves archaeology, genomics, and the linguistic evolution of the Austronesian language family, as well as a general understanding of Philippine prehistory and its place in the Indo‑Pacific saga of human cultural and biological evolution and migration.