The Organization of Intra-Regional and Long-Distance Trade in Prehispanic Philippine Complex Societies

Abstract

THE EARLY TO MID-SECOND MILLENNIUM of our era has been viewed as a time of rapid cultural transition and change in indigenous sociopolitical systems in the Philippines in association with developing trade relations with the Asian mainland. The begin-nings of intensive long-distance trade with the highly developed state of China and with Southeast Asian state-level polities as early as the Sung Period (A.D. 950-1279) is well attested in the massive quantities of imported porcelains and other mainland trade commodities that have been recovered from numerous large lowland burial and/or habitation sites on many of the major islands of the Philippines (Beyer 1947;