Unfinished Businesses in the Visayas

The charming Rizal Boulevard of Dumaguete, where I stayed for seven months

Before coming back here in Sultan Kudarat Province, I spent 14 straight months in the Visayas, about half of which was in the big bustling city of Cebu and the other half in the charming little city of Dumaguete. With such a length of time in those places, you’d think I was able to do there everything that I wanted to that was related to the Kulaman burial jars. No, I wasn’t able to. Though I had gathered plenty of materials for this blog, I failed to accomplish a few very important personal missions.

First on the list is conducting research at the Silliman University Library. The library surely has copies of the Silliman Journal, in which Edward B. Kurjack and Craig T. Sheldon published papers on their excavation of limestone burial jars in the village of Salangsang, Lebak town. The excavation took place in 1967 and 1968, and the papers were published in the journal in 1970 and 1971. Here are the complete publication details:

“The archaeology of Seminoho Cave in Lebak, Cotabato.” E. Kurjack, C. Sheldon. Silliman Journal. Volume 17, Issue No. 17. 1970

“The urn burial caves of Southern Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines.” E. Kurjack, C. Sheldon, M. Keller. Silliman Journal. Volume 18, Issue No. 18. 1971

I had access to Silliman’s library, of course. I drifted to Dumaguete primarily to be a graduate teaching fellow at the university. I was a full-time graduate student and a part-time lecturer, in a manner of speaking. I did not, however, go to the library to research for the classes I was attending or teaching. I relied mostly on online resources, courtesy of the Wi-Fi of the place I was staying in. Plus I had no time to while away the hours inside the library. I was also working as a home-based technical editor for a company in Cebu, and drinking almost every week with my newfound friends, mostly young aspiring poets and fictionists.

In Cebu, I failed to visit the Southwestern University Museum, which also has limestone burial jars in its collection. Though the official website of the school does not contain a page about the museum, a Cebu travel site comprehensively features it, and it is indicated there that the “limestone jar[s]” are from “Sultan Kudarat.”

For three weeks last May, when the regular semester was over, I went back to Cebu form Dumaguete to work full-time again. I’d been making plans to visit Southwestern University—the trip by taxi and the museum tour would not take more than two hours of my time—but the plan was never pushed through. I often felt stressed, and whatever time I didn’t spend working I had to spend sleeping (and Facebooking, I admit).

Again, though, I was able to do a lot, both for this blog and other matters, so I won’t spoil the whole experience by griping about the few kinks. Besides, I believe I will be able to accomplish those self-imposed missions in the future. Cebu and Dumaguete are places I can never say goodbye to with finality. I will go there again and learn more about the Kulaman burial jars.

Kulaman Jars in Cebu

I wasn’t able to update this blog for more than a week, again, because I’ve been to a writing workshop, again. This time, it was in Cebu. Yes, Cebu, where some of the Kulaman burial jars were taken.

Of course, I didn’t let the opportunity to see the jars pass. On November 5, Monday, I dropped by the University of San Carlos Museum, and for the first time, I was able to see the actual jars, not just their online photos. I even ran my fingers along their ridges. It was a surreal experience. I found myself on the verge of tears.

The jars were displayed atop a knee-high wooden platform about two meters wide and four meters long. The platform was placed right in the center of the museum, which was about the size of three classrooms joined at the sides. Thus I can say that the burial jars from Kulaman are the most prominently featured, and maybe the most valuable, artifacts in the museum.

After my extensive online research, I thought I had become a connoisseur of sorts of the jars. I was taken aback when I could not properly classify the artifacts in front of me. I tried my best, though, and I came up with an inventory of burial jars in USC’s possession.

I counted thirty-seven items in all, but only two of them were complete. One was medium-sized, circular, and nearly immaculate. Its body had bold diagonal ridges, and its cover was in the shape of a tent. Carved on the cover were two figures of lizardlike men. The figures were placed back-to-back, on the two wider sides of the cover.

Another complete item was a small quadrilateral jar that appeared grimy. It had dark yellow streaks around it. Its simple flat cover had a protruding knob. At first I thought the design was phallic, but on closer inspection, I found out that tiny holes had been bored on the knob to make it appear like a human face.

Including the two complete ones, there were eighteen jars altogether. The rest of the thirty-seven items were mostly anthropomorphic lids and some fragments I could not identify. Of the eighteen jars, only three were quadrilateral; the others were circular. Two were more than one meter high. Most had simple vertical or diagonal ridges around their bodies, but one of the tallest had a carved figure of a man.

The jars, or at least the ones that didn’t have covers, were empty, so there were no Late Neolithic human bones to see. The collection, though, also had some pieces that were discovered with the jars. They were tacked on a board near the wall, and they included stones, shells, and boars’ teeth.