Ijangs are the terraced

hillfort A hillfort is a type of fortification, fortified refuge or defended settlement located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typical of the late Bronze Age Europe, European Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, Iron Age. So ...

settlements of the

Ivatan people The Ivatan people are an Austronesian ethnolinguistic group native to the Batanes and Babuyan Islands of the northernmost Philippines. They are genetically closely related to other ethnic groups in Northern Luzon, but also share close linguis ...

built on hill tops and ridges in the

Batanes Islands Batanes, officially the Province of Batanes (; ilocano language, Ilocano: ''Probinsia ti Batanes''; , ), is an archipelagic province in the Philippines, administratively part of the Cagayan Valley regions of the Philippines, region. It is the n ...

of the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

. These high rocky formations can serve as fortresses or refuge against the enemies of the Ivatan people.

Background

In 1994, Eusebio Dizon, the deputy director of the

National Museum of the Philippines The National Museum of the Philippines () is an umbrella government organization that oversees a number of national museums in the Philippines, including Ethnography, ethnographic, Anthropology, anthropological, Archaeology, archaeological, an ...

, went to Batanes with his team for an archeological project. They found a triangular-shaped hill in Savidug, a town in Sabtang. These structures were called ''ijang''. Ijangs are similar to the ''

gusuku often refers to castles or fortresses in the Ryukyu Islands that feature stone walls. However, the origin and essence of ''gusuku'' remain controversial. In the archaeology of Okinawa Prefecture, the ''Gusuku period'' refers to an archaeological ...

'' castles found in Okinawa, Japan. Aside from both of them being strategically built in high places, 12th-century Sung-type ceramics and Chinese beads and other artefactual materials recovered from an ijang were dated at almost the same time as the foundations of the Okinawan castles beginning from circa 1200 CE. The Ivatan traditionally lived in the ''ijang'' which were fortified mountain areas and drank sugar-cane wine, or ''palek''. They also used

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

as currency and produced a thriving agriculture-based industry, as well as expertise in seafaring and boatbuilding.

Functions

Based on oral history and tradition, pre-Hispanic Ivatans were divided into small clans that lived not far from the sea. During clan wars, those attacked climbed for safety to the tops of the ijangs where they defended themselves by throwing stones at the enemy below. The tops of the ijangs today are still full of stones—the primitive ammunition of the people. Building a shelter atop the ijang became necessary when fighting continued long for some time. Ijangs were first described by the English freebooter Captain William Dampier when he visited the island of Ivuhos in 1687. Today, there are still traces of such ancient dwellings, including stone posts standing or lying where the Ivatans left them when they abandoned their pagan way of life for Christianity in the late 18th century.

Spanish Colonial Era

In 1783, the Spanish claimed Batanes as part of the Philippines under the auspices of Governor-General

José Basco y Vargas José Basco y Pérez de Vargas, 1st Count of the Conquest of Batanes Islands ( (1731–1805) was a naval officer of the Spanish Navy who served as the 53rd governor of the Spanish Philippines under the Spanish Empire, from 1778 to 1787. An "ec ...

. The Bashi Channel had come to be increasingly used by English East India Company ships and the Spanish authorities brought the islands under their direct administration to prevent them from falling under British control., p.18. However, the Ivatan remained on their ijangs, or mountain fortresses. In 1790, Governor Guerrero decreed that Ivatans were to leave their ijang and live in the lowlands, thereby giving them more people to tax. Basco and Ivana were the first towns that implemented this decree.

References

{{coord missing, Philippines Populated places established in the 12th century 1994 archaeological discoveries Archaeological sites in the Philippines Culture of Batanes Houses in the Philippines National Cultural Treasures of the Philippines 01 Hill forts Infrastructure Building types Buildings and structures by type Urban studies and planning terminology

Background

Functions

Spanish Colonial Era

See also

References