Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1980 - 45

Drawing of the remainsof the
balanghai found nearButuan
City. The longestpiece is the
flat keel and the rectangular
lugs are shownon each of the
planks.

identified definitely as Yeh wares, have been designated "Yüeh-type" wares, since similarities are
noticeable. The Yüeh wares that appeared in
Butuan City are of two types. The first group has a
buff-colored body and is low-fired, chalky, soft and
powdery. These wares are impressed and probably
heavily incised with elaborate designs. The tops
and sides of the everted lips of the vessels are flattened. Glazes come in dull olive and ochre. The
second group is more highly-fired ceramic ranging
from whitish buff, light gray and brownish-orange.
It includes a wide spectrum of glazes: light
greenish-blue wash similar to Shing-pai glazes;
transparent greenish-gray; matte grayish; thin
light olive; and thick rather dull olive glaze. The
base and foot are left unglazed.
The pothunters had created a major problem. In
the course of uncovering the boat they obliterated
more obvious indications of whether the boat originally intruded through the midden or whether the
midden was deposited over the boat at a later time.
Historical documents and archaeological evidence
show that boat burials were common in the earlier
centuries in Southeast Asia, and they have been
reported until recent times, for example, at the
Niah Cave in Kalimantan, Borneo. It was possible
that the midden layer containing the Yüeh ware
sherds was an earlier deposit, with a later boat
interment intruding through this layer. This would
have made it difficult to read the time sequence
since the midden layer above the position of the
boat had largely been destroyed. Fortunately, however, controlled excavations of the unearthed end of
the boat solved the riddle - the shell midden layer
existed in an undisturbed state above one end of the
boat. There was no longer any doubt that this
balanghai dated to at least as early as the tenth
century after Christ.
Yet this date was paradoxical. Associated materials from the wooden coffins, which lay only six

meters east of the boat and approximately at the
same depth, suggested a fourteenth-to-fifteenthcentury date, not the tenth century or earlier.
Further excavation showed that the midden layer
faded out two meters east of the boat, at a point
short of the coffins. Soil stratigraphy indicated that
the boat lay beside an ancient stream bank that in
time was silted over by continual flooding. The midden was deposited from a settlement built on stilts
at the former stream's edge; the place where the
coffins were inhumed would have been on the bank
beyond the reach of the water. It thus became quite
clear that the coffin complex stemmed from a much
later date than the stilt settlement. With this conflict resolved, the Ambangan boat could still confidently be dated to before the tenth century.
In 1977, another boat was found about a kilometer
southwest of the first site. This was closely followed
by still another craft discovered only a few meters to
the southeast. The second balanghai boat measured
about 14 meters in length and, like the first, was
oriented in a north-south direction. It also had the
same characteristic edge-pegging, raised rectangular lugs, and other essential balanghai features: the
flexible bulkhead, the collapsible mast, and the
counter-pegging of the planking pegs. Somewhat
more intact than the first balanghai, it had eight
planks adjoining its flat keel - three on the west
and five on the east. The base of a spar found amidship suggested a collapsible mast; a carved bulkhead-like piece of lumber was still lashed with cabo
negro cordage through the holes in the rectangular
lugs on the planks. One noteworthy artifact, a yellow glass bead, was found in the mud beneath the
hull. Glass first appeared in Philippine archaeological contexts during the Metal Age ranging from
about 300 b.c. in Ralawan; this bead is characteristic of types that appeared during the first millen-

1980
September/October

Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1980

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - September/October 1980