72 THE EARLY AUSTRONESIAN MIGRATION TO LUZON: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE PEÑABLANCA CAVE SITES Armand Salvador B. Mijares Archaeology Studies Program, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines ABSTRACT In the northern Philippines, interaction between the foragers of the Peñablanca cave sites and the early Austronesian farmers of the Cagayan Valley (northern Luzon) was established by at least 3500 years ago. Farmers exchanged earthenware pottery, clay earrings, spindle whorls and shell beads with foragers, possibly for forest products. This exchange, however, did not, on present evidence, include cereal-based foods such as rice. The botanical evidence from the cave sites shows a heavy reliance on wild and arboreal food sources. INTRODUCTION In the broad rift basin of the Cagayan River in northeastern Luzon, archaeological exploration and excavation since the 1970s has led to the discovery of a number of Paleolithic and Neolithic assemblages. Fossils of Middle Pleistocene mammals have been found along the western side of the Valley (Fox 1971). Pebble tools, such as those of the Cabalwanian pebble tool industry, and flake tool workshops, have been found in some of these open air valley sites (Fox and Peralta 1974), although taphonomic issues over their antiquity are not yet resolved. The western slopes of the Sierra Madre have limestone caves that contain both Palaeolithic and Neolithic assemblages. About nine of these caves have been systematically excavated, including those discussed in this paper (Mijares 2002; Ronquillo and Santiago 1977; Thiel 1980). Shell midden sites up to 3 meters deep occur close to the channel of the Cagayan River itself. These shell middens are mainly of Iron Age date, after 2500 BP, and have produced polished black incised and impressed pottery. Some are stratified above non-midden habitation layers that contain an older type of red-slipped pottery (Tsang et al. 2001). One shell midden at Magapit, near Lallo township, has this type of red-slipped pottery throughout, some with dentate-stamped decoration (Thiel 1980). Recent excavation in the clay layer beneath the Nagsabaran shell midden has yielded a water buffalo skull possibly dating to c.3500 BP, associated with red slipped pottery and trapezoidal-sectioned adzes (Tsang and Santiago 2001). There is evidence of rice with red-slipped pottery at the Andarayan site by 3700 BP (Snow et al. 1986). These sites also contain spindle whorls, clay lingling-o ear ornaments, shell and stone beads, and polished stone adzes (Aoyagi et al. 1993, 1997; Ogawa 2000). Figure 1. Neolithic sites in northeastern Luzon, Philippines This paper will present the relationships in material culture and economy during the mid to late Holocene period, since about 4000 BP, between the cave sites in the Callao limestone formation in Peñablanca, immediately east of the Cagayan Valley near Tuguegarao, and the open sites along the Cagayan Valley itself (Fig. 1). In terms of overall chronological sequence, it is clear from the caves that hunting and gathering groups continued to exploit the forest and alluvial plain resources of the valley into the mid-Holocene (Mijares 2005a). Around 4000 to 3500 years ago, a different group of people with a different subsistence economy and a Neolithic technology arrived. In linguistic terms, these were the first speakers of Malayo-Polynesian languages within the Austronesian family to reach the Philippines (Ross 2005; Pawley 2002; Blust 1985). The Malayo-Polynesian linguistic subgroup itself was formed by innovations that occurred after departure from Taiwan (Ross 2005). Both the linguistic