The development of social networks: Subsistence production and exchange between the sixth and sixteenth centuries A.D. in the Tanjay region, Negros Oriental, the Philippines

The development of social networks may be a cultural coping response to the uncertainty (i.e., risk) resulting from environmental variability. One such coping strategy utilized by groups to decrease risk is the exchange of goods. This dissertation focuses on the relationship between the development of social networks and subsistence production and exchange strategies between the sixth and sixteenth centuries A.D. in the Tanjay region, Negros Oriental, the Philippines. Within an evolutionary-ecological framework, the hypothesis which is tested is that the geographic and temporal characteristics of resource variability and agricultural potential structured the development of late prehistoric subsistence exchange between groups having access to complementary goods such as subsistence items and ceramic vessels. Specifically, the relationship between Tanjay, a coastal exchange center, and upland agricultural communities is examined through the consideration of five questions. The first question asks how environmental variability structured complementary exchange networks, geographically and temporally. The second question focuses on the relationship between site size and potential for agricultural productivity. Answers to the third and fourth questions suggest that a subsistence exchange network may have developed between Tanjay and upland communities to ensure access to a critical resource and, thereby, reduce subsistence risk. The final question investigates whether or not a subsistence exchange network may have involved different social groups. Three sources of data are used to support the existence of subsistence exchange networks as a response to the risk created by environmental variability, and they are environmental, ethnohistorical, and archaeological. Research methods employed include identification and mapping of environmental zones, collection and identification of macrobotanical materials, and use of previously-analyzed ceramics assemblages to identify and monitor exchange among different social groups. Through the various analyses contained within this dissertation, the impacts of environmental variability on the development and persistence of exchange networks are reconstructed.