Jar Covers that Indicate Sex

Look at the base of the jar cover, specifically at the dot-like protrusion between the leg-like carvings. The protrusion indicates that the person buried in the jar was male. On the left-hand corner of the photo is KN-9 (no. 25 in Maceda’s paper), an amalgamation of human head and glans penis.

When I was still working in Cebu, I once joked to an officemate that my hometown—Kulaman Plateau—had 1,500-year-old dildos. I was referring, of course, to the phallus-shaped lids of some of the limestone jars. I never repeated that joke on social media, even if I was fond at the time of posting on Facebook almost everything that was happening in my life, simply because I thought it was inappropriate. The jars, after all, were used for burial and therefore sacred. Now, though, I’m making that joke public because I realized, after thoroughly reading a paper by anthropologist Marcelino Maceda, that it wasn’t my mind’s fault if it associated some of the jar covers with human sex organs. I learned from the paper that, indeed, the jar covers might have been made phallic deliberately. For the carvers 1,500 years ago, because they didn’t have a system of writing yet, the best way to indicate the sex of dead people was to draw or carve their sex organs on the jars that they had been buried in.

In the paper “Preliminary Studies of the Figures and Ornamentation of Some Selected Jar Covers from Kulaman Plateau (Southwestern Cotabato), Island of Mindanao, Philippines,” published in Anthropos in 1967, Maceda states that of the thirty-five selected jar covers, more than half indicates whether the remains inside them belong to a male or female individual. Fourteen of the covers appear to point out that they contain men. They are listed below. The first number in each item reflects the number of the artifact as it appears in Maceda’s paper. The second number is the field or museum number. KN stands for Kan-Nitong Cave, and FE stands for Fenefe Cave.

9. M-C0007 (KN)—shaped like a gable, has a bas-relief of a human resembling a flying lizard, assumed to depict a shaman
11. KN-20-0128—shaped like a standing human being with a lingam between the thighs
13. KN-34-0265—realistic bust of a male child
15. KN-12-0142—shaped like a human head, size and look seems to depict an important man
16. KN-16-0188—shaped like a human head with something that resembles the hood of a cobra, assumed to depict a shaman
17. M-00018 (KN)—shaped like a human head but with triangular forehead and ears, assumed to depict a shaman
18. FE-11-8—shaped like a standing human being with a hanging chin that possibly depicts a beard and whiskers, with additional line drawing of a human figure at the back
21. M-C003 (FE)—shaped like a human head, with “realistic” features
22. KN-34-0166—human bust “probably” representing “a young male specimen”
23. KN-49-A—made of clay, shaped like a human being leaning backward, possibly representing a leader or a child (due to its smallness) watching an event
24. M-001 (FE)—shaped like a human head with a haughty expression, probably depicting a male leader
25. KN-9—phallic with features of a human face on one side
27. M-C005—phallic with features of a human face on one side
28. KN-5-0102—phallic with features of a human face on one side

The paper also states that number 7, KN-15-0294, “indicates that the bones contained in the jar were those of a male individual.” I wonder if the specified is a typographical error. The paper states that the cover is gable-shaped and the human figure on one side of the gable has widespread legs. Maceda normally associates these features with female specimens, as in these nine jar covers:

2. KN-17-0164—shaped like a gable, with a human bas-relief that has widespread legs
3. KN-12-0157—shaped like a gable, with spiral fluting
4. KN-8-0015—shaped like a gable, with honeycomb figures
8. KN-17-A—shaped like a gable, with diamond figure incised on one side
14. KN-11-A—shaped like a gable, has abstraction of a human figure with a vulva, has another figure showing the buttocks of a woman with the yoni extending forward
19. KN-17-0166—shaped like a gable, with line drawings of human figures emphasizing breasts and buttocks
20. KN-45-0330—shaped like a gable, has “abstractions which may indicate a female specimen”
26. KN-49-0134—shaped like a pyramid, has lines representing two human figures, one of which has a double yoni and the other has one yoni
34. FE-X-24—shaped like a pyramid, has a line drawing of a woman with mammary glands, womb, and yoni

Not all the figures, of course, is clearly phallic or yonic. Number 12, KN-18-B, is shaped like a standing human being with a lingam between four legs, indicating two men, a couple, or twins. Number 10, KN-50-103, has “a figure at its lower part which is a line drawing of a woman with buttocks emphasized,” and “a stick figure with an excavated female genitalia is found a little lower than where the two feet almost meet.” Maceda believes that number 10 is the cover of a jar containing a specimen of an intersexed individual. If he is right, the lid must be the oldest record in Philippine history about homosexuality.

Maceda believes that the widespread legs of the figure in KN-17-0164 indicate that a woman was buried in the jar. He also believes that gable-shaped jar covers, resembling houses, were used for women.