Iloilo: A Quest for Burial Jars (Part 2 of 2)

I'll tell you right away what happened in Iloilo: the burial jar in the local museum was from the province itself, not from Kulaman Plateau in Mindanao. To my disappointment, I learned from the guide that all the burial-related artifacts in the museum were discovered in the town of San Joaquin. I got emo for about five minutes, and then I told myself that the journey itself, not the outcome, was my reward.

When I think about it now, though, I realize I really should have not been sad. I should have been ecstatic. If the limestone burial jar came from Panay Island, not from Mindanao, it should be closer to my heart. My grandfathers on both sides were natives of Panay who migrated to Mindanao more  or less fifty years ago. The limestone burial jars in Iloilo could be a handiwork of my ancestors! I could call them my own, while the jars in Kulaman Plateau were carved by the ancestors of the present-day Dulangan Manobo and could never be truly my own no matter how much I cherish them.

In Museo Iloilo, I also learned from the guide that the museum owned more than one limestone jar. The guide said that the other samples were in the stockroom. I asked if I could see them. She said I had to ask permission first from the head of the office. It was morning, and the head would not come to work until noontime, so I had to wait. The guide made me fill out a request form. I left the museum and did not go back, however. I wasn't ready yet to conduct a formal research—the kind that I have to affiliate myself with some serious project or official-sounding agency, set an appointment to interview authorities, and set out my findings in academese. No. For now, I don't want any attention. I just like to write whenever, wherever, and however I can and want, an obscure scribbler, a sneaky researcher.

Iloilo: A Quest for Burial Jars (Part 1 of 2)

I was in Iloilo City on the first and second days of this month, and I went there in search of burial jars. My sudden decision to take the quick vacation was spurred by a mere online photo. While googling for images of "limestone burial jars," I came upon a photo taken inside the provincial museum of Iloilo, and in it was a familiar-looking crudely carved white vessel.

I could have easily missed the photo if I was making random searches only. But I was feeling quite diligent that time, or I simply wanted to go through each and every result so that I wouldn't have to run the same search. The image of interest must have been image no. 395 or thereabouts, at page no. 20. It was from a post in a backpacking blog.

Burial jars in Museo Iloilo. The first photo I found online was similar to this. 

The limestone burial jar, at the right-hand side, is barely noticeable,

but because I've seen photos of limestone jars and actual samples,

I was able to identify the vessel right away.

The limestone jar in the photo was quite tiny. It was on the side, buried in about a dozen similar vessels. It stood out, however, because of its whiteness. The other jars around it were made of clay and thus colored brown or gray. (This sounds racist, but for the record, I'm not. I like my brown, Filipino skin.) The caption, or the text that accompanied the search result, also made me think that I had just stumbled upon what I wanted to stumble upon.

I googled more about that specific jar in Iloilo. I found other results. But aside from similar-looking photos, I did not find any detailed information on the jar. I learned that it was displayed in Museo Iloilo, and that was just it. I had a feeling that the the jar was from Kulaman Plateau, since I had not read about limestone jars discovered in other parts of the Philippines. I decided I had to go to Iloilo and verify it for myself.

It also happened that I was starting to be burnt out at work. I had been staying in Cebu for about four months, and though the city is filled with excitement and overflowing with charm, my routine employee life was starting to take a toll on my sanity. So I had more than one good reason to hie off to Iloilo.

I bought a ship ticket to Iloilo and a plane ticket for my return journey. I was all set. But something bugged me. There was something off with the way the burial jar in the photo looked. It had the similar rectangular body as that of Kulaman jars, but its lid was circular. The lid of a Kulaman jar was usually shaped like a tent or a tiny human head. The lid of the jar in Iloilo looked like a thick pizza and was too wide for the mouth of the jar. I wondered if it is not from Kulaman.

I had doubts, but I had a strong feeling that the Iloilo jar was from Kulaman. I was going to the city to know how it got there, not to know where it came from. It would be an interesting trip for me, fraught with possible disappointment and fulfilling discovery.

Kulaman Burial Jars in San Francisco Museum

I have long known that two of Kulaman burial jars are in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, in California. But I could not devote a single post on them due to lack of images and adequate information. Now, though, I can. I've gathered enough materials to fill a post.

I have two closely taken images of the jars, thanks to a certain BrokenSphere who uploaded his photos in Wikimedia Commons. I'm freely using his photos here because he allows blogs, among other free-license publications, to use the materials without any fee or prior permission.

The jars in the Asian Art Museum was "originally procured" by the Richard Gervais Collection. Gervais, an American, traveled in Mindanao in the 1960s. There he discovered that "there were objects in Asia that could fetch a good price in the U.S." After buying some limestone burial jars from Kulaman Plateau, "he began a business that would become his life's passion for the next half century." Today, his collection of artifacts, religious art, and what-not is displayed in two locations and stored in a 15,000-square-foot warehouse. They came from the different parts of the world, primarily Southeast Asia.

It seems that Gervais did not directly sell or donate the two burial jars to Asian Art Museum. One travel site states that the jars are gifts from a certain Marion Greene. I've been trying to search who this philanthropist is, but Google has not given me any relevant results. The travel site also has a good description of the jars' design: "Burial urns generally come in two shapes: circular and square in section. Typically, they are adorned with simple motifs such as zigzag, diamond, and other geometric patterns. A common decoration on the lid is a three-dimensional human head and arms." I think that's a more accurate description compared to mine in my write-ups.

The size of the first jar above is 34 cm x 70 cm x 32 cm. The other's is 71 cm x 33 cm x 33 cm.

Kulaman Burial Jars in Brussels

Good news: I found out through Google that there are Kulaman burial jars in Brussels, Belgium. Bad news: They are for sale, each for 3,500 euros.

I found the Google images a few weeks ago, and I debated with myself for sometime whether I should write about them or not. I believe that by trying to create a comprehensive research on the jars, by coming up with this blog, I've helped the artifacts become popular. I've helped increased their value, making them more attractive to antiques dealers and collectors.

I don't want to be the one leading buyers to the locations of the limestone burial jars, but I also have the duty to inform you readers the real plight of the artifacts. It is also better if I catalog them now so that it will be easier to trace where they will be. Besides, the jars in Brussels are simply overpriced and only an ill-informed collector would buy them at their advertised price.

The jars in Brussels are quite unremarkable compared to the ones in Ayala Museum or the University of San Carlos Museum. Only one of the two is complete. The other is a lid only. Both are dirty and have started to crumble. At nearly 4,700 U.S. dollars or about 200,000 Philippine pesos each, the 1,500-year-old objects will likely stay where they are now for the next 1,500 years.

The objects are in the tastelessly designed catalog of Trocadero, an "online mall" for "authentic antiques and art offered by credible American, European and Asian antiques dealers." The actual location of the jars, however, is Galerie Cecile Kerner, at 19 Rue Lebeau, Brussels. Below is the description of the jars in the Trocadero website. I edited it slightly for easier reading. I could not make sense of some phrases, though.

Several burial caves were found in the southwestern portion of Cotabato province.These caves had a large number of urns and lids carved from limestone. The average size was about 60 cm, which would be too small for primary burial. The lids were various: some of gable form resembling the roof of houses, some conical form extended to vertical elements often carved into human head or the upper part of a human figure.

Conclusions have been made that high-ranking persons had an anthropomorphic lid. I did a surface test on one of the jars with electronic microscope. It shows vegetal growth after decalcification, and many scientific details that I can explain in French but not in English: Usure en feuilletage des parties en quartz, avec les parties les plus dures saillantes. Phase végétale postérieure à la décalcification. (The erosion is not regular as it would have been with an acid artificial forged patina.)

International Journal Has Three Articles on Kulaman

Finally, I'm able to read the three articles of Marcelino Maceda in the international journal Anthropos. For the non-regulars here, Maceda was the first anthropologist who formally studied the limestone burial jars of Kulaman Plateau and published his findings in research journals. He was a faculty member of the University of San Carlos, here in Cebu City.

I'm reading the articles courtesy of JSTOR, an online library known for its digitized old issues of academic publications. JSTOR, short for Journal Storage, offers most of its contents to paying subscribers only, but it allows registered users to read free up to three items at a time. As I write this, I have been registered for barely a week.

An About page of JSTOR states that the website has been allowing free limited access since last year, at around the same time I started doing research on the burial jars of Kulaman Plateau. The three articles of Maceda were the first few sources I found through Google, but I was able to open their first pages only. I must have missed the option to register, or I must have been wary that the registration process would be cumbersome. In any case, the process turned out to be fast and simple, and I'm glad I did register.

I'm still reading the articles thoroughly. Like most academic text, they're not exactly entertaining, but so far, I've discovered plenty of interesting facts. One is that Maceda actually did an excavation, as archaeologists seem to normally do. He and his companions had to dig up inside the caves to find more burial jars. Though I encountered excavation or excavated in the other journal articles on the jars, I avoided using the terms in my own write-ups because I was not sure what exactly the researchers did. The articles I read before focused on the number and features of the finds and not on the process.

I'll be generously quoting Maceda's writings in my next posts, so do drop by. You may also read the articles yourself. I've added their publication details, with links, in the Webliography page of this blog.