Programmes > Par auteur > Boulanger Clara

Bubog I and Bubog II rockshelters on Ilin Island, San Jose, Mindoro Occidental, and Bilat Cave located in Sta. Teresa, Magsaysay, Mindoro Occidental, have revealed the currently earliest human-induced shell-midden dated from c. 32,000 BP to 4,000 BP in the Philippines. Several vertebrate remains have been recovered here mostly from marine environments. This unique study for Island Southeast Asia highlights the subsistence behavior of hunter-gatherer groups of people mainly based on fishes and crabs as well as on terrestrial microvertebrates. The inhabitants of Mindoro and Ilin Island developed skills and subsistence strategies,adapted to their environment, exploiting the surrounding coral reefs and mangrove forest. Reefal taxa such as Scaridae, Labridae, Acanthuridae and Balistidae have been identified at the highest possible taxonomic level, as well as predators such as Carcharhinidae, Muraenidae, Serranidae, Lutjanidae, Lethrinidae and Scombridae. Mangrove swamps are also nurseries for some species of these families. From this diversity both in taxa and environments, the inhabitants of Bubog I most likely developed a wide set of fishing and catching technics, also expressed by associated finds of remains of bone fishing gorges and pebbles with waisted modifications, probably used as netsinkers. They further developed some specific knowledges as shown by the presence in high quantity of poisonous Tetraodontiformes fish remains (Ostraciidae, Tetraodontidae and Diodontidae). At the light of proportions of crustacean and fish remains versus mammal remains, mangrove foraging in Bubog I was interestingly replaced around c. 6000kyrs BP by tropical rainforest foraging, and at a time when the development of swamps should have been at its maximum in the Philippines.