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Jar burial in San Remigio

4-5 minutos

By Jobers Bersales, Cebu Daily News

San Remigio, Cebu—The Lapyahan Public Beach in the here was

the scene of a frenzied but controlled retrieval of human bones
buried inside a large jar with a conical bottom yesterday. The work
proceeded in earnest as the Holy Week entered its most significant
stretch and my team of archaeologists and students had to wind
down to give way to the observance of the holiest days in the
Christian calendar.

The University of San Carlos and the National Museum are here on
a third round of excavations with the logistical support of the
Province of Cebu as well as the Municipality of San Remigio. This
round follows the successful conduct last year of two month-long
excavations, including one that was conducted with the University
of Guam and the Cebu Provincial Tourism and Heritage Council
(CPTHC).

After seven days of digging, we found the first jar burial ever
recovered at an archaeological site in Cebu by archaeologists. And
the jar I am talking about is equally unique: it has a conical bottom
and appears to be shaped like a spinning top or kasing. There have
been plenty of reports about the looting of burial sites all over Cebu
that included jar burials but no archaeological report has ever come
of them. That is, except the very brief descriptions of finding such
burials in caves (not buried in the ground) by Carl E. Guthe of the
University of Michigan Southern Philippines Expedition around
1923 to 1925.

We are once again fortunate that the tiny, 1,200-square meter white

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sand beach property of the municipality has turned out to be more

promising despite the tales of looting in the 1970s that attended out
first arrival here in March last year.

The other day we also uncovered what I suspect to be a smaller jar

burial at another excavation unit about 50 meters north of this
particular find. That one had another jar placed in overturned
position on top to cover it. When we screened the pot-covered jar,
there were bones that seemed to be those of an infant although
only further laboratory analysis will be able to confirm if these are
human and not animal.

Secondary burials happen when living relatives exhume the dead

bodies of loved ones after a sufficient time when the flesh has
decomposed. The bones are then collected, washed, and in some
cultures, dyed red (primarily ochre) and then placed inside a jar.

This would be usually carried out only when one could afford it.
Thus, many families had to postpone doing this reburial until such
time that they had the resources—in our case pigs and lots of food
akin to those served in a fiesta—to invite relatives to attend the
event.

I suspect the Cebuano word “hubkas” which today refers to the first
death anniversary celebrations carried out either at home or in the
cemetery or both had a different meaning in pre-Spanish times.

There are cultures like the Tana Toraja of Indonesia that still
practice secondary burial customs but which involve elaborate
wooden carriages bearing the bones of the dead inside a box in a
procession to a sacred cave, followed thereafter by sumptuous
feasting. This even became a tourist attraction in itself, sometimes
staged even without real bones, just so tourists can be enthralled in
the 1980s. Fortunately, such tourist restagings of the event were
condemned as inauthentic and a desecration of real cultural
traditions and have since been stopped.

We still have three weeks left for this excavation season and
already one more burial is waiting to be opened at another unit near
this jar burial. But that will have to wait as we have to join the rest of
Christendom in observing the passion, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ.

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