Preserving Our Heritage Towards the Future of our Museums

Posted on:  |  Keith Reburiano

As we continue to celebrate Museums and Galleries Month, the #NationalMuseumPH through its Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage Division (MUCHD) gives you a glimpse of the most recent fieldwork activities in Butuan City. 

Amongst the most notable example of wooden craft remains recovered in the Philippines are the Butuan Boats, dated between the 8th and 10th centuries CE (Common Era). These ancient boats were found beneath the mudflats of an old river system in Butuan City in the 1970s. They served as the oldest material evidence of the early watercraft in the Philippines featuring the ingenuity of early Filipinos. Lately, the importance and the widespread occurrence of this watercraft in the country were investigated.

Mr. Nero M. Austero, Senior Museum Researcher of MUCHD, in collaboration with Dr. Ligaya SP. Lacsina of the Archaeological Studies Program in UP-Diliman (UP-ASP), and Dr. Abhirada Komoot of the Thammasat University in Thailand, conducted a preliminary ocular assessment from October 07–10, 2022. They documented and assessed the current condition of the old excavation sites as well as the Butuan boat collections at the NMP-Eastern Northern Mindanao Regional Museum in Butuan in preparation for a possible regional collaborative project.  During the 4-day activity, the riverine and nearby coastal communities in Butuan were also visited to collect data on the current as well as the traditional boat-building practices. The team also conducted an ocular survey on the availability of the sugar palm, Arenga pennata. Sugar palm or Hijok plant, locally termed as kaong, is archaeologically referred to as the source of Cabo negro or the black fiber used as ropes in building the Butuan boats and other similar Southeast Asian lashed-lug boats. 

The preliminary assessment was successful in confirming the presence of kaong in the area, and gathering information on boat-building technology in Butuan. This information will deepen our historical, archaeological, and ethnographical knowledge of the variety, innovations, and lost practices of ancient boat-building technology. With further research, we can conserve and protect our heritage towards a better future for our museums. 

#MGM2022

#MaritimeMonday

#FutureOfMuseums

#MaritimeHeritage

#ButuanBoats

Article and poster by the NMP Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage Division

© 2022 National Museum of the Philippines

References 

Lacsina LSP. (2020). The Butuan Boats: Southeast Asian Boat Construction in the Philippines at the End of the First Millennium. The Journal of History. LXVI: 1-35.

(2019).  The same-same boatbuilding tradition? Looking at the different examples of lashed-lug boats from the Southeast Asia. In Past, Present and Future of ASEAN Maritime Heritage. 38-53. 

(2016a). Examining pre-colonial Southeast Asian boatbuilding: An archaeological study of the Butuan Boats and the use of edge-joined planking in local and regional construction techniques. Dissertation, Flinders University, South Australia. Pp.272. 

(2016b). Boats of the Precolonial Philippines: Butuan Boats. In Selin H. (Eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. 948-954. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7747-7_10279. 

(2015). The Butuan Boats of the Philippines: Southeast Asian edge-joined and lashed-lug watercraft. Bulletin of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology. 39: 126-132.