site within the city limits of Manila. From this site a number of small flakes were recovered with ground working edges and points. A number of postholes were found suggesting houses on probable prepared platforms. This site and its ground edge stone tools were also unique for the Philippines (Peterson 1979).

In 1971 the Ford Foundation approved a proposal by the National Museum of the Philippines and Solheim for the University of Hawaii to survey and test discovered sites in southeastern Mindanao. This was to be a part of a larger, long-term program of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)–sponsored Malay Culture Project, which was to “explore and test archaeologically the broad triangular area from southeastern Mindanao on the north, northern Sulawesi on the southwest, and the western end of Irian Jaya on the southeast, including the Moluccas on the southern base line…. an area which should prove to be central to the understanding of the movement of the Austronesian speaking peoples into Melanesia and the Pacific and which would be equally important in understanding the cultural and racial relationships between Indonesia and the Philippines” (Solheim et al. 1979, 1).

Work in the field started in June 1972 and continued into November. The two most important sites discovered were Asin Cave, on the east coast close to the southeastern tip of Mindanao, and Talikod Rock Shelter, on Talikod Island near Davao City. Asin Cave had been disturbed by an earthquake but had much restorable earthenware pottery from burial jars and associated smaller vessels. No porcelains, stonewares, or metal were present in the site. The earthenware included incised and painted pottery of the Kalanay Pottery Complex and several small pots with incised decoration over cord-marking (Solheim et al. 1979, 43–80, 117–121). Talikod Rock Shelter was only studied with two small test pits as it was close to the end of the fieldwork and the team could not stay over night on the island for security reasons. Stone flakes and worked shell, worked in a similar way as the stone flakes, were recovered in quantity. No polished stone tools were found. Two C-14 dates from one shell from this site were 3,950±90 years ago and 4,170±90 years ago (SUA-258). Two dates on partly fossilized worked shell were 7,320±100 years ago (SUA-256) and 7,620±100 years ago (SUA-257), but with the beginning of fossilization the dates are suspect (Solheim et al. 1979, 111, 116–117). Shell tools have been found at several sites on Palawan (Fox 1970, 60–64) and at Sanga Sanga with about the same dating.

A regional seminar on Southeast Asian Archaeology was held in Manila and Palawan from 26 June to 4 July 1972, with the financial assistance of the Ford Foundation. This was the first such seminar to bring together a number of the new and young native Southeast Asian archaeologists (Tantoco 1974). This sort of seminar became common with the development of SPAFA, much improving communication among the archaeologists of Southeast Asia. In connection with this seminar A Selected Bibliography for the Study of Philippine Prehistory was presented to all participants.

The primary emphasis of the National Museum’s archaeology program moved from Palawan to the Cagayan Valley in northern Luzon in 1971. Three different areas of sites were developed over the next five years: on the western side of the Cagayan River, between the Cagayan and Chico rivers, near the mouth of the Cagayan River in the north, and to the east of the Cagayan River near Penablanca. The western sites were Pleistocene with a fossil fauna including Elephas, Stegodon, Rhinoceros, crocodile, giant tortoise, pig, and deer, possibly associated with flake and core tools. This was in the same area examined by von Koenigswald in 1953. The geological stratigraphy here is very complex and sites that were first thought to be Middle and Late Pleistocene may well be Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.

In 1970 a shell mound was excavated at Lal-lo, in the north. Barbara Theil made a second excavation at this and other nearby sites in 1977. The most common artifact was pottery, some with an incised or impressed decoration of punctate straight or zigzag lines and rarely small impressed circles. This distinctive decoration is similar to rare decoration on a few shards from a Yuan-shan site in northern Taiwan; to