Filipino Archaeologist Presents Research Findings on the Ifugao Rice Terraces in LA

LOS ANGELES 10 February 2020 – The Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles represented by Deputy Consul General Ambrosio Brian F. Enciso III and Cultural Officer Maria Dolores C. Sales joined members of the academe, social scientists, and Ifugao community leaders in California for the screening of the short film “Old Kiyyangan Story”, held at the University of California-Los Angeles’ (UCLA) Haines Hall Reading Room on 31 January 2020.

The animated short film, co-written by Filipino anthropological archaeologist, Stephen B. Acabado, PhD of UCLA and Marlon Martin of the Save the Ifugao Movement Inc. (SITMo), was based on oral histories and archaeological excavations at the Old Kiyyangan Village in Kiyyangan, Ifugao, which was undertaken by the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP) from 2012 to 2016. 

The film presented the IAP’s research findings, including the assertion that the upland rice field systems in the province of Ifugao were responses to the social and political pressures from Spanish colonization into the region starting circa 1600 CE, therefore refuting dominant historical narratives on the Ifugao rice terraces, which were previously thought to be over 2,000 years old.

The IAP is a collaborative research program of the SITMo, National Museum of the Philippines, Archaeological Studies Program-University of the Philippines and the UCLA, whose main goals include the development of a methodological approach to dating agricultural terraces, documentation of the effects of European colonialism to economic and political patterns and the ethnography of Ifugao Indigenous agricultural practices, among others. END

Dr. Stephen B. Acabado (left) and Deputy Consul General Ambrosio Brian F. Enciso III (right) share their thoughts to the audience after the film screening of “Old Kiyyangan Stoy.” (Los Angeles PCG photo)

For more information, visit https://www.philippineconsulatela.org or https://www.facebook.com/PHLinLA/.