Lecture tackles early history’s maritime gold trade

HISTORY would reveal one of the Cordillera’s primary mineral resource was gold, which was traded heavily along the Ilocos coastal regions throughout the centuries.

An interesting question on the gold trade was the manner in which the commodity moved from the source to the market.

Michael Armand Canilao, anthropologist, archaeologist and economist will attempt to answer this question by tracing the “gold trade trails and settlements” in the 10th to the 20th centuries using geographic information systems (GIS).

Canilao’s findings will be presented in a lecture at the University of the Philippines Baguio on July 25, at 3:00 p.m at the audiovisual room of the College of Social Sciences.

Canilao’s presentation is the sixth lecture under the Saliksik Kordilyera lecture series in which research undertaken by prominent academics such as Dr. Albert Bacdayan and Dr. Esteban Magannon have been featured.

The lectures are spearheaded by UP Baguio’s Cordillera Studies Center and the Program on Indigenous Cultures (PIC).

Canilao’s research project titled “Evanescent Market Encounters in Northwestern Luzon: Identifying Five Gold Trading Trails through GIS, Ethnohistory and Archaeology” inquires into “various ethnohistorical sources and archaeological data” on the gold trade and plots them digitally using GIS. Canilao said “the GIS analysis entails producing predictive models and suitability models…to assess its goodness-to-fit.”

He said the expansive maritime trading system in Benguet, Abra, Mountain Province, Ilocos Sur, La Union and Pangasinan have had an effect on its peoples in terms of how societies are organized beyond their ethno-linguistic groupings. Canilao said the research method “lies in its ability to detect convergences or divergences” in these societies as it casts a light at how “small-scale producers” did trade transactions at “evanescent markets.”

Canilao explained “evanescent market” might be regarded today as “tiangge” or flea markets. These are “temporary markets that spring into life at coastal areas adjacent to where a maritime trading ship has dropped anchor,” he said.

The transitory character of these markets makes for an interesting subject inquiry. Far from what we know about flea markets today as small trading posts, Canilao said trading gold at the “evanescent markets” are a “trade and exchange events…connected to a far-reaching maritime exchange network that reached as far as the Indian Ocean.” Roland Rabang