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THE discovery of similar red-slipped pottery with dentate stamping, among other artifacts from Cagayan, Northern Philippines and the Marianas lends credence to the theory of direct settlement of the Marianas from the Northern Philippines.
Dr. Mike T. Carson and his wife Dr. Hsiao-chun Hung, of Australia National University, have been conducting archaeological work on Tinian as they look into early human settlements in the Marianas. Dr. Hung, who has been studying human settlements in Asia and the Pacific islands, began her work in the northern Philippines as early as 1995 while she was pursuing her master’s degree.
She noted that in the Philippines the pottery dates back to 4,000 years ago.
“Around 4000 years ago, they started using pottery, the same type we found in the Marianas,” said Dr. Hung referring to the northern Philippines sites where they unearthed potsherds, among other artifacts.
Dr. Hung told Variety that she also studied pottery and tools from Japan and Taiwan, but none of these samples are similar to those found in the Marianas.
Dr. Carson explains further. He said they found it interesting how early the Marianas were settled. By dating the archeological sites, Dr. Carson said they traced the movements of people from Asia to the Pacific, beginning with China, then Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Pacific.
Dr. Carson said it was in Taiwan — the first time outside the Asian continent — where they saw a type of pottery with a distinctive style. They also found an archaeological site that indicated people had been living in long-term settlements.
But at archeological sites in the Northern Philippines, specifically in Cagayan, in the Marianas and in the Lapita region, they found more similar pottery styles.
He pointed out that the “shared pottery style doesn’t happen by accident. People are reproducing the same style.”
This was what attracted their attention.
Dr. Carson said that through radiocarbon dating, they determined the Philippine pottery was the oldest at 4,000 years. “In the Marianas, it dates back to about 3,500 years while Lapita in Melanesia, it is slightly later.”
“They have the same styles maintained over hundreds of years,” said Dr. Carson.
In an article published in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Dr. Carson, Dr. Hung, Dr. Glenn Summerhayes and Dr. Peter Bellwood stated that the three major techniques of point-impression, rows of circles, and fine-line incision are found in the Philippines, Marianas and earliest Lapita assemblages.
Examples of rare paddle impressions, the archaeologists said, in which vessel exteriors were impressed by using carved paddles, “are extremely few in the Philippines and the Marianas.”
The Carson couple has been conducting extensive work at a site north of the House of Taga on Tinian which has yielded more than 30,000 potsherds and human remains.
“The excavation near House of Taga was even more productive than we originally had expected. During the last few weeks, we have been making steady progress with the data-analysis. Dr Hung and I are working on several aspects, so far with encouraging results,” Dr. Carson told Variety.
Dr. Carson and Dr. Hung were able to expose “the living surface of one of the very first habitation sites in the Mariana Islands, slightly inland from today’s House of Taga.”
“This location was right on the old seashore about 3500 years ago. We found the remains of old house structures, cooking areas, and concentrations of different types of artifacts that help us to reconstruct what people were doing at the site,” he said.
For Dr. Carson, their latest work on Tinian which they concluded in March 2013 gave them a clear picture of what life was like in the Marianas 3,500 years ago “when people lived for the first time on the remote and small islands of the Pacific.”
Dr. Carson said what drew their attention was the oldest decorated pottery.
“It’s the best opportunity to learn about the technical skills, artistic output, and daily lives of the people who lived at the site,” said Dr. Carson. He told Variety that the pottery was all locally made with red-clay and mixed with local sands. They also found lumps of partly-worked clay not yet finished into the final pots.
“The very first people to live here, therefore, knew how to find and manage the raw materials, as well as how to use a complex decorative system of tiny dentate-stamped and circle-stamped motifs,” said Carson.
From the perspective of the Asia Pacific region, Dr. Carson said, “We now are seeing the same decorative system in different regions, and we can trace the trail through archaeological dating.”
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see http://www.mvariety.com
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