A Lemery Archaeological Sequence

Throughout 1969 and the early months of 1970, large quantities of Batangas Iron Age potteries reached Manila through commercial sources. This implied the ongoing wholesale destruction of prehistoric archaeological sites in Batangas. In response to the obvious need of the moment, and with the encouragement of Father Frank Lynch, S.J., Dr. Warren Peterson, a salvage archaeology project – as the M.A. thesis of the three authors – was initiated in association with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Ateneo de Manila University. Conducted in an undisturbed parcel of land surrounded by a sizeable area overrun by illegal diggers, the Lemery Archaeological Project could properly be referred to as salvage archaeology. The stratified Lemery site bridges the present to the Upper Paleolithic through the material remains of seven sociocultural systems within a possible time span of 40,000 years. Had the project not been initiated, much of the archaeological data from this remarkable site would have been irretrievably lost.