Votive Earthenware as Mortuary Practice: New Data from Catanauan, Philippines

Tracey Pilgrim1*, Tim Denham1, Marc Oxenham2, Grace Barretto-Tesoro3, and Mathieu Leclerc1

Archaeological research into Island Southeast Asian earthenware has to date been largely typological in nature, utilising vessel form and surface treatment as comparators to infer prehistoric human migration patterns and cultural dispersals. In the Philippines, the work of Wilhelm Solheim II, who favoured vessel decoration and morphology as the primary data sources in the development of the Sa Huynh-Kalanay pottery classification system, dominates the scholarship and has been the primary basis for comparison of Metal Age earthenware. More recent approaches incorporating inter-disciplinary frameworks have been focused on earthenware from proto-historic contexts which are complicated by the introduction of Tradewares. This paper will introduce work being conducted on the votive pottery from the Napa site, a Metal Age jar burial cemetery in Catanauan, Quezon Province, Luzon. The research aims to understand how the production, decoration and deposition of votive earthenware actively constituted mortuary practice at the site and how this practice may or may not demonstrate a participation in community and regional mortuary traditions. By examining chaînes opératoires, incised motif style and sherd fragmentation patterns, the study will move beyond conventional pottery classification models to demonstrate how technological characterisation of earthenware can provide insight into ritual agency that is embedded within regional interaction spheres.