Sculpture and pottery

• Bululs


  Ifugao rice gods, usually made in pairs and kept in the house or granary, carved in narra wood, consecrated by bathing in pig's blood, having myths recited to them, and receiving offerings of wine, ritual boxes, and rice cakes
• Sculpture of souls rowing a boat toward a Philippine Hades


  Depicted in the Manunggul jar, an example of the earliest attempts of men to copy in figure connected with religion
• Ancient drawings discovered in Angono, Rizal


  • Linear incisions of insect-like human figures found in a cave
• Likha, tao-tao, larawan


  Religious images of the Tagalogs, represented the anitos (spirits to whom the early Filipinos prayed and who fulfilled a role similar to that of the later patron saints)
• Anitos


  • Patron of good harvest, guardians of voyages by water, defenders in battle, spirits who protected people from diseases and sudden deaths, and assisted women in pregnancy and childbirth
  • Dian Masalanta (invoked by lovers)
  • Lacapati and Idianale (protected cultivated lands and farm animals)
• Likha figures


  • Made of stone or brain coral, face or limbs merely suggested by hasty superficial incisions, characterized by curved lines in contrast to the geometrically simple carvings of the Cordilleras, evoked a serene but lifeless quality
• Figures of spirits


  • Found in Mindoro, Masbate, and Davao
• Pre-Hispanic sculptor was more dexterous in wood as medium, but wood has not withstood the centuries, while stone sculpture of better craftsmanship may have been destroyed by the Spanish friars
• Petroglyphs in Angono caves

  Animate figures interpreted as representing juveniles or infants, occupy 25 meters of the rockwall with a height of 3.7 meters, executed into all the available space with no orientation nor association, no relationships in scale and size, no baseline, made on the tuff layer of the wall with "v" and "u" cross sections, rounded head on a narrow neck, rectangular body with a lower taper, linear flexed limb with three digits each, 127 still discernable figures, 51 distinct types, symbolic representations executed by different individuals using a single mental template, associated with healing and sympathetic magic, dating from late Neolithic Age
• Petroglyphs in Alab, Mountain Province

  Carved on boulders on top of promontories, configurations are those of pedunda, dating relatively later, not earlier than 1500 B.C. or even later
• Kinnari


  A sculpture in the form of a bird with the head of a woman, dated to circa 10th-13th century, excavated in Surigao around 1981
• The beginning of pottery in the country is yet unknown, but the pots found in Masbate may suggest that clay pots were made as early as 2710 B.C.
• Flourishing centers of pottery

  • Rizal, Masbate, Negros, and Mindoro
• Manunggul burial


  Called the queen of Philippine prehistoric artifacts
• Pottery designs


  • Abstract (dots, straight lines, curved lines derived from nature such as seeds, stars, waves, clouds, branches, flowers, feathers) or representational (very miniscule drawings of human objects found in a vessel unearthed in the Kalanay excavation area in Masbate)
• Okir or 'carved', ukkil


  Decorative wood sculpture among the Muslims in western Mindanao, using geometric patterns and stylized representations of floral and animal forms, derived from the orthodox Islamic prohibition of realistic representations of humans and animals
• Torogon house of the Maranaos


  • Shows a flamboyant panolong which includes protruding beams with colorful and exuberant serpent and vine-and-leaf okir