Haven Geographies and the Indigenous Prestige Economies of Spanish Colonial Philippines

At the start of Spanish colonization many Philippine islanders chose to flee to the rugged terrain of the mountains and neighboring islands free from the crown’s reach. These rugged landscapes served as havens with minimal, though increasing, Spanish interference. I use pedestrian survey and excavation to investigate the impact of Spanish colonization on indigenous Philippine prestige economies in one of these frontier areas, the Malangwa watershed on Negros Oriental. This archaeological data was incorporated into statistical and spatial analyses. The primary spatial analyses relied on measures of spatial autocorrelation, specifically global and local forms of Moran’s Index. While spatial autocorrelation is not widely applied to archaeological data sets, I demonstrate its utility in the interpretation of data collected in areas in which there are significant impediments to full coverage survey.