For the past few weeks, I've been having trouble managing my time. To tell you more about my personal life, I've been given more responsibility at work (okay, enough with the humility: I've been promoted) and I enrolled in a master's degree this June here in Cebu. I believe, though, that I have learned to adjust my schedule to accommodate the new challenges, so I might be able to update this blog as promised for the rest of the year.
Now let's proceed to what I should really be talking about—the limestone burial jars left in Kulaman Plateau. As I revealed in the previous post, I found out last summer that not all the jars had been taken away from my hometown. But the ones that were still there had not been properly preserved. I found a burial jar for a baby at the barangay hall of Kuden, left lying in a corner and sometimes used as a trash bin. The barangay chairman said there were more jars at a cave that was still within the territory of the village but two hours away by motorcycle. The jars there, though, the chairman added, had been shattered to pieces.
It so happened that I was in Kuden to visit the White Cave, which had been generating tourism buzz, and the cave where the burial jars were was near the White Cave. I asked the tourist guide if he could let me see the jars cave, and he said yes. Unfortunately, I underestimated the toil from the trip. Going to the White Cave was exhausting, to say the least, so I begged off and told the guide I would just come back some other time to see the jars.
I was sure, though, that the jars were still there because we came across a sample on our way to the White Cave. It was just a cover, but having seen a number of limestone jars, I could tell that it was authentic. Judging by the way it looked, I believe it had been in that spot for several years only. The thin layer of dirt and moss all over it indicated that it had not been exposed to the elements for long.
A cover of a burial jar lying near the footpath to the White Cave.
It must have been taken from a cave several years ago,
perhaps to be sold, but for some reason, the transaction fell through.
The cover was lying near the footpath that my companions and I were treading. The reason for its being there was that some people had tried to carry it from the cave to the populated district of the village, probably to be sold. The barangay chairman of Kuden had told me and my companions earlier that a trading had really occurred in the not-so-distant past. He said the indigenous people in the area took some jars from a cave to prospectors who came from the lowlands. However, the buyers allegedly took the jars without paying the natives, so in their anger, the natives went back to the cave and smashed the remaining jars in pieces.
I had no way of verifying the story, so I took it with a grain of salt. Surely, the true story is more complex and less racist than the chairman's version. If it's true, those who took the jars must have not come from the academe. They're probably treasure hunters. Kuden is not one of the locations where formal research on the burial jars have been conducted. Marcelino Maceda of the University of San Carlos in Cebu, in 1960s, studied (and took away) the jars of Menteng, at present a district of Barangay Tinalon, just beside Barangay Kuden. The jars that are now in Silliman University in Negros came from Salangsang, at present a barangay of the municipality of Lebak, a little farther from Kuden.
Although destroyed, the jars in Kuden is in their original location, so they can still be a good subject of an archaeological research. I hope one will be conducted soon, before they disappear at the hands of hungry looters or selfish wealthy collectors.
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