The Earliest Bone Tools in the Philippines: Patterns and Issues

Abstract

Bone tools occur in Pleistocene sites across Island Southeast Asia, but the synthesis here shows that these implements appear only in Holocene levels in the Philippines. One good example is the site of Balobok Rockshelter whose archaeological horizons yielded bone tools, showing that there is continuity in the technology at least in one isolated site. Elsewhere in the archipelago, few sites hold promise. And on the whole, there is no evidence to suggest that a developed bone technology was widespread in the islands during the Pleistocene and the Holocene, though bone artifacts appear in more complex forms later in the archaeology of the islands. Such a pattern might be explained by many factors but as the study of bone tools has not figured well in archaeological research in the Philippines, much of the understanding on bone tools is tentative. Many questions are raised by this current status and the paper shows that answers to these depend in large part in the application of appropriate frameworks of analysis.