Photo of Burial Jars in Silliman

Picture taking is not allowed at the University of Silliman Anthropological Museum, so when I wrote about the Kulaman jars in it, my blog post had an accompanying drawing instead of photos. Those who have been to the museum would probably say that my drawing is really more a caricature than a realistic representation of the actual archaeological artifacts. I won’t disagree. I am not contented myself with the lame illustration. That’s why I feel compelled to show you an actual photo of the jars.

I had the photo in my file long before I was able to set foot in Dumaguete. If I remember it right, I took it from a forum website, but I didn’t bother to take note of the address and other relevant information because I had no intention of using it here in my blog. I wanted to visit Dumaguete and take photos of the burial jars there myself. As it happened, however, I was able to visit the city but couldn’t take the photos. Thus, for this post, I’ll break my self-imposed rule of using only my own photos in this blog. With your sight, I want you to feel more the presence of the jars.

My drawing of the largest Kulaman jars

in Silliman Museum

A photo of Kulaman burial jars in Silliman University

Museum, taken before 2013 and posted in a forum website

A cropped screenshot from the Silliman University website

My drawing shows the largest jars in the collection. When I visited the museum, the five jars were on the floor and the rest of the collection was on top of a platform. I no longer remember clearly, but I think the rest of the collection was encased in glass. It was composed of smaller jars, lids, trinkets, and shards of pottery. The photo, meanwhile, shows that the jars used to have a different arrangement and were all displayed on top of a platform. Like my drawing, the photo does not show the complete collection. Notice that I numbered the jars in the images above. I did it so that you can identify which jars are the same.

Now here’s a curious thing about item number 4: I don’t remember seeing it in the three occasions that I visited the museum. I think that at the back of my mind, I looked for it. I had seen its image at the website of Silliman University. Among the artifacts from Kulaman Plateau, only the lid, a miniature upper body of a man, is the only piece that is displayed at the website. It looks smooth, pure white, and gleaming at the site. Maybe that's why I wasn't able to notice it. When seen in person, it might be rough in texture and off-white in color, as with the other items. Or is it no longer part of the collection?

Fiction: Artifacts He Unearthed

During the Silliman University National Writers Workshop last May, my co-fellows and I were asked to create a batch anthology. Our indie book is worth mentioning in this blog because my story in it has got a lot to do with this blog. Here are five fun-for-me facts about the piece:

1. The story is in the form of blog posts.
2. The story is about blog posts that quote blog posts that quote blog posts.
3. I am the main blogger in the story, and I am writing about the blog of my co-fellow Jovy, who wrote about his experiences in Kulaman Plateau and my blog about Kulaman Plateau.
4. I am writing my blog posts in 2017, and Jovy (whom I killed with his permission) wrote his in 2015, and he made references to this very blog that you are reading, written from 2012 up to the present.
5. I call my piece "speculative metanonfiction," but my co-fellow and roommate Reno said it's really a fan fiction of myself.

You may read my story by downloading for free the anthology in the webpage of the writers workshop. Scroll down to the image of the book cover, and click the link right below it.

I won't tell you to enjoy reading my story because I wasn't thinking at all of readers when I wrote it. I was just excited by the fact that, for the first time in a little more than a year, I was writing a new story. I hope to take the part about Jovy in the story and rewrite it in a traditional narrative format in the coming months.

"Arguably the best-produced anthology" was how Sir Ian, coordinator

of Silliman's creative writing center, described our book.

The cover photo, taken by Arkay, shows Pre jumping off a cliff

in Siquijor. Jonggai did the book layout, and Reno wrote the intro.

My goal was to have the longest output among those who wrote

their pieces while in the Writers Village, so my story occupies 20

of the 124 pages of the book. I mentioned my name at least 10 times,

so maybe Reno was right: the story is a fan fiction of myself.

My excuse for including this photo is that I need to show you what

the whole book looks like. This was taken by Mike, alumnus

of the same workshop.

Kulaman Burial Jars at Silliman University

I’ve been to the Silliman University Anthropological Museum a few times now, and my main purpose in going there is, of course, to see the limestone burial jars from Kulaman Plateau, my hometown. The first time I saw the jars, I was not as awed as I was when I saw the jars in the University of San Carlos Museum in Cebu. It must be for two reasons. First, the ones in San Carlos were the very first Kulaman jars I saw in person, and second, the pieces in the Silliman collection are fewer and less ornate. Nonetheless, the Silliman collection has its own charm. It contains items that cannot be found in other museums.

I counted 15 items in the Silliman collection—5 large jars with lids, 4 small jars with lids, 1 small jar without a lid, and 5 lids. Since picture taking is not allowed inside the museum, I decided to sketch the jars. I was able to do the large ones only since the museum was about to close when I did it, and I was not so enthusiastic about my output. I do not and cannot draw.

The large-sized Kulaman jars in Silliman University Anthropological Museum. These jars, more or less one meter high, are normally used to contain the bones of adult dead persons. I'm sorry for the awful illustration; picture taking is not allowed inside the museum.

If I may digress a little, I used to draw when I was a kid. I could draw fairly well. I won a municipal-level poster-making contest or two when I was in elementary, and I reached the regional schools press conference in high school as an editorial cartoonist. I stopped, however, when I was fifteen, when I was old enough to gauge that my outputs were just decent at best and it would be better if I channeled my creativity into other mediums, though that time I had not yet fully realized that the medium should be writing.

Back to sketching the burial jars, I’m glad I did it because I noticed that one jar has curved engravings. Usually, the bodies of Kulaman jars are adorned with straight vertical or diagonal lines, sometimes forming large diamonds. The patterns on this one jar look like fat intertwined 9’s and 6’s.

In my quest for the burial jars, I discover more things than I expect and do things I won’t in other circumstances. Of course, those things are not really bucket list–worthy, but I’m having fun. I wonder what I’ll do next.

Kulaman Burial Jars in Dumaguete

Perhaps I’m really fated to see the burial jars of Kulaman with or without much effort. I am now based in Dumaguete City, specifically at Silliman University, which happens to be one of only two universities that conducted studies on the burial jars (the other one being University of San Carlos in Cebu City). Since November last year, at the start of the second semester, I’ve been a graduate teaching fellow at Silliman. I’m on something like a scholarship. I’m taking up masteral classes for free, and in exchange, I have to teach two undergraduate subjects.

I learned that Silliman was in need of a graduate teaching fellow on the third week of November. In a hurry, and without really expecting to be accepted, I sent my resume through email. As I’ve said, it must be fated. I was asked to come here in Dumaguete that very week. I asked permission from the company I’m working for in Cebu City, and after some serious negotiations, I was allowed to keep my job and work from home. So here I am now, walking inside the campus of Silliman on weekdays, just a few hundred meters away from a group of Kulaman burial jars.

The burial jars, along with other artifacts from other parts of the country, are housed on the second floor of Kalayaan Hall, which serves as the Silliman University Anthropological Museum. The jars were taken away from Kulaman Plateau in the late 1960s. In 1965–66, Samuel Briones, a graduate student at Silliman, led the exploration. Manuel Maceda of the University of San Carlos had gone to Kulaman Plateau first, but Briones went to a different spot. While Maceda conducted his study in the hamlet of Menteng, which is part of the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino today, Briones went to Salangsang , a village in the municipality of Lebak.

Kalayaan Hall, perhaps the most iconic building in Silliman University,

houses the Kulaman jars on its second floor.

In 1967–68, two foreign anthropologists conducted further research in Salangsang: Edward B. Kurjack, of the University of Miami, and Craig T. Sheldon, of the University of Oregon. They were the ones who, through carbon dating, found out that the jars are about 1,500 years old. Kurjack and Sheldon were affiliated with Silliman, but I’m not sure what role the university specifically played in their research. They might be graduate students enrolled in Silliman or just conducted their thesis through the help of the university. I will find out in the next months, for Kurjack and Sheldon had some papers about the jars published in Silliman Journal. I’ll look for copies of those papers in the school library.

I was able to visit the museum on the first or second week of December. Too bad, taking pictures is not allowed there. I had a digital camera with me, and truth be told, I was tempted to steal some shots. The CCTV camera, however, was just two or three meters away from the limestone jars and its red dots menacing, so I kept my hands where they should be. Besides, I don’t mind waiting for the right time for me to take pictures. I believe time will come when circumstances will allow me to openly say to people, “Hey, I’m writing a book on the burial jars. Allow me access to this and that.” For now, though, I’m happy enough as an obscure blogger.