Hunter-gatherer landscapes and lowland trade in the prehispanic Philippines

Ethnographers have recently debated two distinct models of hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist interaction in the tropical forests of island Southeast Asia: (1) the 'Isolate' Model, proposing that hunter-gatherers had a social network and stable, tropical forest-based foraging economy largely independent of contact with sedentary farmers until the historic era, and (2) the 'Interdependent' Model, suggesting a lengthy history of symbiotic exchange and economic overlap between the two populations. While these models have been examined and debated from the perspective of ethnohistoric and linguistic data, relevant archaeological evidence has been lacking. This paper uses archaeological data on settlement patterns, lithic assemblage composition and the regional circulation of ceramics, metal, and other trade goods to demonstrate that the types of economic interactions suggested by the 'Interdependent' Model have existed between lowland agriculturalists and upland foragers in the Tanjay Region of the Central Philippines for at least the last 1500 years.