City. Two reports that present more detail on developments in Philippine archaeology are by Ronquillo (1985) and Solheim (1974).

This article takes as the starting point of this final period the discovery of the tabon caves on the west coast of Palawan. Up to this time most of the archaeological work done by the museum staff was on late sites with quantities of trade porcelains from China and Mainland Southeast Asia.

The most important group of sites in the Philippines, the Tabon Caves, were discovered on the west coast of Palawan by Fox in 1962. By the end of the first season’s survey forty caves and rock shelters had been found containing archaeological materials and many more were expected to be found in future seasons. The Tabon Caves and other sites in limestone outcrops along the west coast of Palawan were the main subjects of research from 1962 through 1966. Six periods of Pleistocene occupation were recovered with relatively unchanging flake tool assemblages, and C-14 dating from about 30,000 years ago to 9,250±250 years ago. A human skull cap was recovered, unfortunately from a disturbed location; at first it was thought to be between 22,000 to 24,000 years old, it is now thought to be around 15,000 years old. Above this was a jar burial assemblage with the pottery related to the Sa-huynh-Kalanay Pottery Tradition and dating roughly from 1,500 b.c., continuing into what Fox called the Metal Age with a few bronze and iron artifacts, now thought to date from about 400 b.c. to around a.d. 600. While no final reports have appeared, Fox (1970) made an important summary of many of the sites.

In a 1963–1964 ethnographic research program on the Kulaman Plateau in Mindanao, Marcelino Maceda of the University of San Carlos discovered a cave with limestone burial jars. Further nearby cave sites with limestone and earthenware burial jars were found in 1966 and followed up by excavations by Edward B. Kurjack and Craig T. Sheldon (Kurjack, Sheldon, and Keller 1971), all from Silliman University. One C-14 date on collagen for about the middle of the use of the cave is a.d. 585 (Kurjack et al. 1971, 147). While collagen dates are often suspect, this date is at least reasonable. The pottery forms and uncommon decoration suggest relationships with both the Bao-Malay Pottery Tradition and the Sa-huynh-Kalanay Pottery Tradition.

A symposium was held in 1965 in honor of Beyer on his eighty-second birthday. The large volume of proceedings volume published (Zamora 1967) contains many important articles on Philippine archaeology and anthropology. Beyer died on 31 December 1966.

In 1966 a site was discovered within a Catholic church compound in the city limits of Manila. It was a cemetery with seventy-one burials and rich associated porcelain tradewares dating from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. After excavation it was developed into a site museum, open to the public daily (Fox and Legaspi 1977). An impressive book presented much of the porcelain recovered (Locsin 1967).

Fieldwork by Alexander Spoehr of the University of Pittsburgh in both archaeology and ethnology, starting in 1966 and completed in 1969, focuses on the Sulu archipelago and Zamboanga, Mindanao. This was to be a study of ethnic diversity and how different ethnic groups interacted through time. Excavations were made in sites ranging from early historic back to the early site of Balobok Rock Shelter on Sanga Sanga Island in the Sulu archipelago with C-14 dates of 6,650±180 years ago and 7,945±190 years ago. Most of the sites excavated were late historic. Spoehr only tested the rock shelter but reported that “the surface of the site and the excavations yielded a small collection of shards and shell and stone artifacts” (Spoehr 1973, 273). The shards included some red slipped pottery, one such shard with two horizontal rows of impressed circles, inlaid with lime (ibid., Fig. 117). This is similar to the earliest reported pottery in Micronesia and to that of two sites at Batungan Mountain on Masbate with a C-14 date of 2,710±100 years ago (Solheim 1968, 26, Figs. 5, 60). Spoehr’s later date appears to be associated with the red slipped pottery. As Spoehr’s dates were from shell, and so out of line with other dates from Island Southeast Asia, they came to be disregarded.

In 1992 the site was reinvestigated by a team for the National Museum and from Okinawa.