Talk:Archaeology of the Philippines

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): A116erin, Adanayan, Ajrca, Lorenaayoub, AsafZafrany, AllenBGD, GordonHa1, Lrncohen3. Peer reviewers: Lrncohen3.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 September 2019 and 13 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Decussate. Peer reviewers: Taytumnbush, Paryamehsad, Joshroizman, Shaylavi1234.

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 August 2020 and 3 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bobadillag. Peer reviewers: Lperkins5825.

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Additional Sections

Should we add some sections "miscellaneous" for a random artifacts found in Philippines such as "Pearl of Allah" for example? or anything which is recently discovered with little significance to Philippine Archeology? . (Dashcam (talk) 13:10, 8 September 2017 (UTC))

The "Copper Buddhas" are not extant artifacts

Two points regarding the supposed "Copper Buddhas" of Ma-i:

• 1. They are not extant artifacts. They were artifacts in the 10th century when they were described by the Chinese annals. However, there are no further documentation of them past that. As such, they are not, strictly artifacts - just descriptions of artifacts. They don't belong in this list.
• 2. Current scholarship agrees that the Chinese word used is not necessarily proof that these were buddha images, or buddhist images. The accepted translation is "images." (See the bibliographies of Scott, Junker, and Jocano) Compared to contemporary Philippine culture, the word is the equivalent of people calling these figures "santo-santo", which would not be taken as evidence that these images were somehow Roman Catholic in provenance. I'd make changes to reflect this, but I think point one makes this moot.

- Alternativity (talk) 09:08, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Fixed (Subheading removed) After carefully reexamining the sources and confirming that these are not extant artifacts, I have removed the reference to the copper images of Ma-i which are known only because they were mentioned by the Song Dynasty annals. - Alternativity (talk) 14:07, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Problematic Categorization of Early Historic finds

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that the "Hindu Buddhist" heading is problematic, since some of the artifacts described are more closely associated with the austronesian religeons which are more-ancient than any south-asian/ southeast-asian influences in the Philippines. Also, the scholarly consensus is that Hindu and/or Buddhist influence in the Philippines came through Java and elsewhere in Malaysia and Indonesia (which also had Austronesian roots) rather than direct (and therefore purely) from India. - Alternativity (talk) 09:08, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Temporary fix - I temporarily fixed the Austronesian issue by creating a new section. I suspect the Butuan artifacts should be placed here as well, but I need to review the literature again to confirm dates. - Alternativity (talk) 10:09, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

A better solution - I've given it careful thought and realized that it's simply unjustifiable to categorize finds based on religeous or ethnic origin. In many cases - especially in cases not cited here, such as the earthenware or the Balangay - there simply isn't a religious association which would allow for categorization. Also, it'd make the reader more likely to confuse religeon ("Hindu-buddhist") with culture, creating false impressions of power relations or cultural "influence" even if schlarship is actually divided. (I have a sneaking suspicion that this is an artifact from an earlier version of this article, which had been created by a banned user who seemed to have an agenda of romanticizing India as having some direct political and cultural presence in the Philippines... a theory current scholars are wary of.)

Anyway, it seems more logical to categorize the artifacts/sites based on the usage of the artifacts (ornaments, figurines, utensils, boats, etc). It's more objective, and certainly less susceptible to romanticization. - Alternativity (talk) 14:03, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Update - I was working on the article using the mobile app over the Christmas break (Dec 23-25) and so I didn't realize that there was a separate subheading vaguely labeled "cultural" artifacts, containing nonreligeous items. I've now merged the relevant sections, effectively eliminating the categories "Hindu-buddhist" and "Islamic", distributing them according to the use of each artifact. As a result, the section is now broken up into the following categories: Architecture; Burial sites and grave artifacts; Clothing or Jewelry; Currency; Documents, inscriptions, or seals; Iconography; Ships and Utensils. This seems to be a neutral, unromanticized categorization which makes room for additions based on new scholarship. I'll try cleaning up each subsection now. If anyone has better ideas, feel free to add/reorganize the categories or discuss them here in the talk page. I think this is mostly fixed, so for now, I shall stop updating this page regarding changes. Looking forward to any discussion points other editors may want to bring up. - Alternativity (talk) 06:31, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

"Sa Huyun culture in the Philippines"

Also flagging that I have not seen scholarly articles asserting the presence of the Vietnamese Sa Huyun culture IN the Philippines. To my knowledge, the scholarship agrees that these imply the existence of trade - none of them (and no web links I've seen other than wikipedia and its mirrors) claim any kind of Physical Sa Huyun settlements in the Philippines.

Also, why are the Manunggul and Maitum jars put under the Sa Huyun label? There's no basis for that unless you think all of the iron age artifacts in the Philippines are somehow Sa Huyun. Which is what the article seems to (IMHO baselessly) imply. The text as it is undermines the facts of indigenous development in the Philippines. - Alternativity (talk) 09:27, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Temporary fix. This one was much too clearly a false generalization for me to ignore. I've temporarily fixed it by changing the heading to "Iron Age", and moving the section on Sa Hayun to the Masbate pottery complex entry. However, I've not had time to weed out the sources which don't actually mention the Philippines (see WP:Synth). - Alternativity (talk) 09:45, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Article Evaluation

Hello. I enjoyed reading the article "Archaeology of the Philippines."However, I noticed that some of the references links did not work.For instance, the reference titled "The Philippines: Archaeology in the Philippines to 1950" by Alfredo Evangelista did not work. Also, the reference link for "Researchers discover fossil of human older than Tabon man" by Howie G. Severino did not work. Thus, I feel that the source links not working may cause the reader to question if the claims in the article are accurate. To avoid this questioning, I suggest that the links for the references should be updated. I feel that the reference links not working may be the reason why the article was "nominated for deletion" as stated on the articles talk page. Also, I feel that the title is slightly vague. The article discusses colonialism frequently, and thus, I feel the article could improve by being more specific about what will be discussed in the article. I also felt that the article did not go into enough detail about the Rizal-Bulacan Archaeological Survey.I feel that providing more sources for this section would help make the article stronger.A116erin (talk) 23:18, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

History of archaeology

I hope to get round to doing it myself at some point, but in case anybody wants to continue the section on the history of archaeology post-independence, these look like good sources:

• Ronquillo 1985. Archaeological research in the Philippines, 1951-1983
• Hutterer 1987. Philippine Archaeology: Status and Prospects
• Dizon 1994. A DECADE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE PHILIPPINES, 1982-1992

– Joe (talk) 21:38, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Post-indpendence

Hi everyone! I have added some information in the post-independence section using some new sources not mentioned in the article already. I wrote about some important archaeologists that contributed in finding artifacts and their influence with archaeology in the Philippines. Along with adding that I think that making the introduction longer or giving more information about it would make the article look better. If I have time to work on it I would, but I mainly focused on the post-independence portion. Bobadillag (talk) 17:16, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

update I added onto the introduction of the article making look it fuller. I don't know if I touched up on the right topic to help introduce the article, but feel free to fix or add on to it.Bobadillag (talk) 15:59, 14 November 2020 (UTC)