GOLD AND WOOD: MATERIAL CULTURE AND RITUAL IN PRECOLONIAL AND CATHOLIC PHILIPPINES

Abstract

When Ferdinand Magellan landed in what would become the Philippine archipelago, the crew of the circumnavigation voyage was struck by the amount of gold that the indigenous peoples carried. The subsequent interactions between Magellan’s crew and the indigenous peoples of the Visayan islands set the stage for over 300 years of Spanish colonialism and Christianization. However, they did not just find gold in the Philippines. The Spanish also encountered a rich culture that included animist elements, and wood was an important material for the indigenous communities of the archipelago. There have been a plethora of works that have addressed the contexts of indigenous resistance and negotiation in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period, and this work attempts to investigate the presence of this negotiation within the context of material cultures. Through the materials of gold and wood, I argue that the use of material culture shows clear indications of this syncretic process during the Spanish colonial period.