Home 
Barely five months after the sensational find of a 1.1-meter loop-in-loop gold necklace in Boljoon and we are once again back to understand Cebu’s late pre-Spanish period by excavating the grounds of Boljoon Church. True enough, the site, just a few meters in front of the venerable old church and convent that make up Cebu’s only National Cultural Treasure, we have already uncovered what seems to be three or four burials in various states of disturbance.
Nearly a hundred uncut river as well as coral stones—perhaps the foundations of an earlier structure—had intruded into the burials, very much like the topsy-turvy condition of six burials we exposed in May 2007 during our second phase of excavations here. Amazingly, another of the 1590s-1600s Anxi-type blue-and-white bowls decorated with a lotus leaf and Chinese characters that we recovered in 2007 were left virtually untouched. More surprisingly, a blue-and white double gourd jarlet was also placed over the bowl in an obvious attempt at replacing what had been disturbed by whoever built the later pile of stones. I have never seen such a jarlet mimicking the design of a double gourd in catalogues before so I take it that this is a rare find once again out of Boljoon.
What is more intriguing is why the bowl and jarlet were re-buried with seeming respect and reverence, while the bones of the individuals on which these were buried with were merely placed in between the piles of stones, skulls, teeth, long bones and what have you, all fragmented and scattered in between the stones. Is this some kind of ritual or just plain hasty re-burial by some unknown workers in a hurry to end the day?
No one can tell us here, neither are there records of where the foundations of the 1690 mission church that Fr. Nicolas dela Cuadra, the first Augustinian missionary assigned to Boljoon, had used when converting the natives to Catholicism. Neither have we seen signs of a fire, as indicated by records that a 1782 fire destroyed much of the church and the town of Boljoon itself.
We began our fifth phase of excavations Thursday last week. Barely half a day of excavations and we already began combing through fragments of human bones, some 20 to 30 centimeters below the surface. Such is the richness of this site, so important for understanding the last 50 years before and 100 years after the Spanish conquest and conversion that began with Legazpi in 1565.
Our most disappointing set of burials was also exposed barely two days after we started excavating here: two sets of burials, side by side, each with one leg over the other and nothing more! No signs of disturbance are visible, just a few stones. And yet where are the bodies?
I am tempted to blame the sound system that kept repeating the disco lyrics “Nobody nobody but you!” from the tennis court across our site last Saturday. Indeed we are finding no bodies, no bodies but legs here!
With funding by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of San Carlos and the logistical support of the Cebu Provincial Tourism and Heritage Council and the National Museum, this fifth phase will continue till next week after which we shall move on to Oslob and carry out test excavations around the gymnasium across the newly rehabilitated Cuartel. Next month we will try another site, this time in the uplands of Argao for another 28 days of full excavations. Let us see if Oslob and Argao can match the wealth of puzzles and enigmas that Boljoon continues to dish out before us. Let me thank once again His Eminence Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal and Fr. Milton Medida, parish priest of Boljoon, for permitting these excavations and to Mayor Deogenes Derama and Vice Mayor Merlou Derama for the logistical support.
