CURRENT RESEARCH &
RESEARCH SUMMARIES

4. LAURA JUNKER, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA.

I am presently carrying out a two-year archaeological research project in the Tanjay/Bais region of Negros Oriental in the Philippines. The project, to run consecutive summers in 1994 and 1995, is funded by National Geographic and focuses on the impact of Chinese trade on the political economy of immediate prehispanic coastal chiefdoms in the Philippines. Building on earlier work in the region by Karl Hutterer, Bill Macdonald, myself and others, the project involves excavations of upriver "secondary centers" that are linked through riverine trade with the coastal port of Tanjay from the 6th to 16th centuries A.D. The project will also include additional excavations at the chiefly center of Tanjay and additional systematic surface survey along he lower 5 kilometers of the Tanjay River. This past summer, three upriver settlements were excavated, and the archaeological team is presently attempting to study changes in trade intensity and volume through the analysis of trade porcelains and earthenwares. At least one of the sites also yielded strong evidence for specialized metal production and should provide significant details about the organization of internal production systems in the 15th - 16th century and how these systems responded to fluctuations in foreign trade. Mary Gunn, a Ph.D. candidate at University of Hawaii, is participating in the project in both 1994 and 1995. Other project participants include faculty and students from the Department of Sociology/Anthroplogy at Silliman University in Dumaguete, graduate students from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Philippines, and archaeologists from the Philippines National Museum.

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