 Victor Paz was a former director of the Archaeological Studies Program of the University of the Philippines. He finished a BA and MA in history from the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy and became interested in archaeology. He obtained a PhD in archaeology from the University of Cambridge in the UK. He was instrumental in the creation of ASP and single-handedly ensured the strengthening of the discipline after his PhD. Dr. Paz, may I call you Victor? Oh, of course. So you majored in history. That was, you had a, as I said, you had a BA and an MA. Why did you shift to archaeology? Well, because I was a serious student of history. And I was lucky. I was in the department of history before it became formerly department of ASP. And it was a time when there was so much intellectual ferment in the department from undergraduates, graduate students, faculty. And at that time, we became very serious students of historiography. So we were very philosophical, philosophical with our history. And then Ziyu Salazar came in to the picture and introduced Pantayong Pana Nao. And at that time, we were thinking that, well, there's no more problem about the framework for the study of Philippine history. So the question is how do we go beyond the 16th century when you have a scarcity of documents. And so I thought, well, the best way is really to study through material culture, which was really in the realm of archaeology. But I was very naive, of course, at that time. But I was very excited about the idea of studying archaeology. But there was no institution at that time that really formally trained people to become archaeologists. But there was an institution, a national one, that were solely doing archaeological fieldwork. And that's the National Museum. And lucky for me, the people there were very welcoming. Willie Ronquilio, Sandy Salcedo. And I made sure that every summer, every semester break, I will volunteer in archaeological excavations run by the National Museum. So that's how it started, more or less. So it's from an academic perspective. Do you have other reasons or other influences that help you decide to consider archaeology? I was always interested in history. I was always interested in things that fascinated me, that I wasn't really, I didn't know the answers. And so when it came to Philippine history, there was another component that was very important. And that's, and I will say, I was an activist too. So we were very interested in transforming society, Philippine society for the better, in a very structural way at the beginning. And I was a believer that if we know more, we might be able to create perhaps a better future. So that was my thinking. You said we. Who were your peers at this time? Well, at the time there, I would say several generations, but UP was, and UP is still such an environment where you have several of you, you benefit from close interaction, cheek to jaw with people who are much older than you and people who are just a bit younger than you. And there was a ferment, I would say, and I was lucky that way, that I took advantage of that ferment. I'm talking about the early 80s, throughout the 80s. And the early 90s. So that's the reason why it was almost handed to me, the situation that I could benefit from being in the university and do what I want to do to pursue in the future. You think living in UP, growing up and living UP and having a mother who's also in the academy helped you? Definitely, definitely. As a young boy, I grew up in a street full of children of my age, just a bit older, just a bit younger. And the next block, the two blocks away, were also filled with children. And our street were boys like boys can be, like really normal boys, but children of academics and non-academic personnel. Then the two adjacent streets are more serious children. The nerds, I will say, and most of them became medical doctors. One is the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters now, and she was much younger than me. So it was an environment really very conducive for children to play. And then we can go into anyone's household and play in anyone's yard. We didn't have any fences in those days. And we can play at night. And it was a wonderful childhood inside Ucampus. You must have been a very happy one also. Oh, very happy. But I did also realize later in high school that we were very privileged. I always thought that every household had a library until I went to a house of a classmate in high school outside UP, which didn't even have a single book. It didn't have a library. I was taken aback by that. Because all the houses in UP campus had libraries, kaitiyong simple encyclopedia, but full libraries. So that was interesting. But it was a reflection later in life that it was an advantage to grow up in the university campus at that time. And my experience is not unique. And if you ask anyone who grew up inside a campus in those days, from the 60s to the 80s, they will tell you the same story. It's the ferment, the unintentional ferment of just close proximity with families who are also coming from academia. Going back to archaeology, can you describe to us the first time we encountered or met the archaeologists from the National Museum? Oh, I was awed by... It was a group of very macho men. Was that positive or negative? That was positive at the time because I was also a young kaki man at that time. And the romance of the field. And they knew their stuff. They knew how to do fieldwork. And I learned a lot from interacting with them as a novice. And I think that was very positive. But later on, of course, I realized that it was also limiting. And limiting. Because... And it was also an observation at the museum that it was a revolving door when it came to researchers. They would get very young women, men from anthropology, from the UP. But most of them won't last. It became too limiting at the end, this culture of machismo. And so that was a lesson which later on we applied to the ASP to try not to make it that way anymore. Babalikang ko yung machismo na yan. So you just... It was your own initiative to go to the museum and talk to people and ask where you can volunteer. So where did you volunteer? What were the fieldworks? Where were the fieldworks? What were the projects? Well, from the top of my head, I will say I volunteered. In those days, the museum didn't want to excavate near Manila. So we were so far away. Panatungan in Mindanao will be my favorite. A long excavation. There was one in Batangas. There was one in Sambales, of course. So you were volunteering at the National Museum while doing your master's at the Department of History? I was doing my master's then I finished my master's and then I did a... I enrolled in Philippine studies. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Yes, I did. I was waiting for... and this is what I tell our students. I graduated from BA linguistics apos ikaw from your master's. From my master's. Oh, I didn't know that. I saw you in the crowd. But you see, it was very awkward for me because my mother was the dean at that time. But it was good. So Ziyu Salazar was the chairman of the department when I graduated from my master's. Oh, my no, my undergraduate. And he was very influential, I have to say, in my intellectual growth. But the idea of linking with the museum really enriched my view of the field. I was... I suppose it was the adventurous streak in me. Oh, let me just say, when I was growing up, we camped all over the UP campus. And we didn't realize why some of the parents, sometimes we were already camping here. This place here, near where this building here is now situated. But then there were many informal settlers also. So we will be moved by the parents to another camp place at the back of NSRI. But it was like we love doing those outdoor stuff. And then so the field for me was always a place of adventure and awe and learning. What was the best experience you had as a volunteer with the National Museum Archaeologist? Well, let me say, my best experience I suppose will be... I was never very lucky in excavations. They will always give me a place and nothing will come out. But my best experience is in a place where we were digging a very rich burial site and nothing came out of my... the place where I was excavating, that the museum was very kind enough to move me to a place where I could experience excavating there. Where was this? This was in Panotungan. Panotungan. Angel Baltista was the kind person who did that. But that was a good lesson for me because I realized it didn't really matter if I found anything myself. It was a thing of, well, I was happy that others were finding things and I was fascinated by that. And I was always given... I was like... I never really excavated anything that was super fantastic in any of those excavations. But I was always fascinated and happy that the excavation in general was good. So I think that was good for me because it didn't matter now whether... So it kind of trained me to appreciate things in a holistic manner. It's not all about what I myself excavate but what everyone... it's a collective thing. So that was a very good lesson, I think. So looking back, how did you assess the discipline at that time? When you were volunteering at the National Museum there was no ASP yet. There was only Dr. Dizon who was the only one at the PhD at that time. Newly minted, it just came back about 1987. It just came back from Universal Pennsylvania. At that time, I didn't have very strong opinions about it except that I knew it had to develop. And I think that is how UPI helped because somehow everyone who was senior to me realized there was a need to develop archaeology and what was lacking at that time was that the discipline when it was boosted in 1977 with more items in the National Museum, more resources, very quickly by the late 80s, those who were very young in 77 were not very young anymore in 1988 but they could not mentor because the National Museum wasn't built to mentor people. So they were items and they were limited items and so they were getting old without training the next generation. And so this is something that people must know the leadership of the museum then, the more senior members of the discipline of archaeology realized this. Willie Ronquilio, more senior than Willie, was Fred Evangelista, Jesus Peralta, and so they supported the efforts of the university to boost archaeology in UP and that's why the ASB eventually was created to address this big gaping lack of structure in training generations of people to follow through and develop the discipline. And that's why I suppose the ASB was timely and its development, its progress and its success is very important to the practice of archaeology. Is this the reason why you left the Philippine Studies Program and decided to do a PhD in archaeology? I was just parking there. I was really going for one scholarship, applying for scholarships, several scholarships and programs abroad because I knew as soon as the ASB was built, formally, I need to go abroad and study and then come back and help in its building. So that was a very deliberate act in my part. But having said that, again, when Ziyu Salazar was Dean of CSSP, he tried his best to mark a portion of Philippine Studies at least to offer courses that is dedicated to archaeology. And so I enrolled in those courses. There were at least two courses that I remember correctly. And therefore, that's something that was very important. But it's like a step-gap solution to the problem. We knew that there has to be a more dedicated program for the students. Did you apply to different universities or just to Cambridge? No, I applied to different universities. I applied to SOA, CCL, Cambridge. But I didn't apply in any of the U.S. universities. Why did you choose U.K. Because the older ones, all got their degrees and training in the U.S. And I knew that if we're going to build an institution, it would be great that there are other traditions that we can bring in. And so we will have a better ferment. Or we can learn from the best practices of the United States tradition and the European tradition. Anyway, I went for Cambridge because, well, it's a name. I didn't know anyone from Cambridge. I didn't know all the big boys and girls, right? But I just went for it. And I didn't regret it at all. It was your decision. Did you zoom Salazar? Because you mentioned him his names several times. But he hated me by that. He hated you. Because I was at a follower. But I respected him. And now we're very good friends. We collaborate a lot. But in those days, it was different. Oh, it was different. Oh, no, no, not at all. If it was there, he would have said go to France, rather than to the UK. It was my decision. It was a decision. Sinong ko mausab sayo before leaving for Cambridge? Because I remember before I left for Cambridge, he gave me a pep talk and said, you should return. Oh, me? Well, that kind of philosophy of you must return. That's my mother. It was very clear because UP at that time was unlucky when a lot of our colleagues were getting scholarships and they were rescinding their commitment to UP and not coming back. And then that destroyed the faculty development of that discipline. So that left a mark in me. And we were developing the discipline in those days, Grace. But you know who really was one of those who talked to me before I left? Randy DeVind. And Randy said, you know, if I had a, because Randy in those days already could have gone to Oxford, rather than Manchester. But Oxford wanted him to be to go back to undergrad. And he said, no, no, I want to do I want to do a graduate work. I'm already a faculty member, etc. But the lesson that he, and this is what I tell people even now, you don't go to a place because of the big boys and girls, because of a known professor. You go to a place because of its environment. And that was his lesson. That was his lesson. And he learned it in a more roundabout and negative way. But it was very good advice. And it's sound advice that I will always give people. Don't go to a place because there's a very famous professor there. Go because of the environment. So in Cambridge, you've never crossed your mind to stay for a year or two after you graduate? No, not at all. Even if you fell in love with? No, yes. I found love there. Yes. It was very clear to me. I knew that was the last moment in my life where I will not be responsible for anything else but myself. Because I knew when I finished, when I came back, it would be all just responsibilities and institution building, attempts to that. And so when I was there, I left. I lived a life of rivalry. That was a wonderful life for me. I just absorbed everything. I always told myself before I left, this is a long ethnography. Long ethnography. And then I... Five years. Five years. Because I didn't unfilled. And then a PhD. So it was good. And I never crossed my mind to go for a post-doc or stay there. I knew this is my place. So what did you learn in Cambridge that you wanted to apply in UP and in ASP? Several things, several things. I learned, in fact, and they were good lessons because I think the results were not too bad. First, it's all about the culture and the academic institution. Like I said, not the big boys or girls. It has to be a dynamic one. You have to give your community, especially your students, access to facilities. Academic work is not nine to five. So you have to have free access to facilities no matter how scarce they are. And that's a very important lesson. You have to make sure that your faculty is international. Very important lesson. If it's a monocultural faculty, then the default would be the base culture. And I think that's one problem that we have in many disciplines in our university. If we are all pinoy, then at the beginning, when you're young, you know, you're very open, but you are not too open when you're a senior to a very young faculty member that emphasizes you from the same culture. If it's someone who's not pinoy, you'll say this person may not have any good manners, but this person is very good what this person does. And so you will give that person more leeway. And then the only interaction you will have is in a academic way. And I think that's very healthy. And you don't have to be a very rich institution to be successful. In fact, it's good not to have everything. You served as director of the Archaeological Studies Program for three terms. So that's nine years. Actually, ten years. So what were the challenges you faced and how did you overcome those challenges in terms of developing ASP as an institution, developing the discipline, archaeology, and of course, maintaining or making sure that the students stay and finish their course or their degree. The first challenge was to create a healthy level of self-confidence for people who are studying the discipline. And I realized that the best way to do that was to get them understand that it's not that difficult to publish. And so we created Taspit, Hukai, you know, publishing venues for people to make them productive, to make them have a sense that what they're doing is worthwhile because it's not derivative. So that's one important thing. Second, is to create a big challenge was to create the faculty. I was the only one who was full-time. And that was a big challenge. But then I had the naivety to think that if people were just productive, then there will be no more replication of all this of old culture of negativity or factionalism or tendencies of. But then I realized the flip side of not being productive, which generates that kind of culture is the sensitivity of colleagues that are too productive and they get slighted easily. So it's a very hard balance to maintain. But the bottom line is to create a culture that sees the community as not their own or a replica of themselves or clone of themselves, but to really to treat the institution as a separate entity altogether from the individual who are in it. And that is a challenge. And I realized that ten years is too long to run an institution. And I was always kid people and half kidding that if I carried on being an administrator for another five years, I will start believing the myth that I am the institution. And that's not going to be healthy. We were very lucky at ASP because I took over Bong Deeson who's very different from myself. Then Mandy Mejares took over the administration from myself who's again very different from me. And you are very different from Mandy or myself or Bong. And so our institution is very healthy in that way. But can you imagine if it was run by one individual for too long, no? That this is not going to happen. This is the reason why we are very dynamic as a academic institution. So while you were administrator, you also had several research projects. Did, yes. One in Palawan and of course you handled several of the field schools in all the field schools I think in Mindoro. So how did you balance being an archeologist and being an administrator at the same time? It was not too difficult in those days because we were very small. But it was difficult nevertheless because it's balancing your I suppose your desire to better the dynamics of an institution and its capabilities. And then there's that part of you that you want to do your own research. So that was not too easy to do. And then on top of that you have family life, right? And that's also not difficult. If you ask what suffered between career institution building, personal, I mean academic kudos institution building or family, I will say in those days, in hindsight that perhaps family suffered a bit, right? And then the personal kudos research suffered a bit. And I was dedicated to the institution building. I would not recommend that to anyone though. But that's the lesson that many of us get from you. Always think of the institution and then everything else will follow. Remember what I will say. If a person is serious with what they're doing in a short period of time they look old. Hair-wise and everything. If they looked very young at the end of it then they weren't serious about it. What do you think are the essentials in developing the practice of archaeology in the Philippines? The essentials will be the capable I suppose the warm bodies to gather enough warm bodies interested in the in the development and transformation of discipline. Second is I suppose and I've been and you know this we cannot do it by ourselves. There cannot be just one institution dedicated to the practice or the training of archaeologists in the Philippines. And therefore we have to encourage other universities to carry on institutions at least. The National Museum by its nature at the moment that's not their purview. They are the ones who regulate us. But those who institutions to train we must encourage control other university to create programs too. So this is very important. And I will say and this is hard to explain we must maintain a culture of a positive culture academic culture collegiality which is hard to maintain because it's in a kind of paradox our discipline or any academic discipline for that matter encourages individuality and the celebration of an individual's success. At the same time in our case we are a discipline that cannot do our research by ourselves. We are by nature collaborative. So balancing that is a hard to do. Earlier I asked you what was your assessment of the discipline when you were volunteering at the National Museum and now what's your assessment of the discipline after 25 years? I think we have grown exponentially exponentially when and the matrix there will be like this. The amount of publication you are the first product of ASP grace for the masters if you remember and that was a good one and everyone read your thesis. You can tell that by the cover of our in the library where there's no more you cannot read anymore the cover because people have been handling it so much and then since then we have graduated people formally in our program diploma masters PhD and then we are known very much known anywhere in the world now we are we are at the top of our discipline in the region and this is one lesson I learned in Europe you know you're doing something right when people come to visit you so people from your discipline will go out of the way and come and visit your institution and we have had that so people come and like like beeline and then they give lectures so you know that there's something good going on in our discipline. ASP has many collaborators from across the world from Europe from Australia Southeast Asia how do we maintain how do you think ASP should maintain that collaboration? Well, by the nature of it then a collaboration should be beneficial for both sides and that can be maintained by just carrying on with this idea that we are we don't have a chip on our shoulders you see that's another very early lesson we when we practice before somehow we thought that our colleagues from outside were better than us of course they are in many ways in terms of their facilities and their experience etc so how we augmented that in the early days was we never had filled collaborative research with them without a substantial number of our graduate students with us so we are many of us out in there second we never thought that we were inferior to our colleagues and so if they set a cadence we follow that cadence and I think that's very important never collaborate with people that you cannot follow their cadence collaborate with people that you who have the same kind of work ethics perhaps same interests and that is always going to be will come up with very positive results and and so collaboration wasn't very difficult for us and that's why we have so many collaboration collaborative research with many many nationalities through the years you have your own I have my own and then our other colleagues do do you think we need to replicate facilities abroad or create our own? Good question you see why replicate if we can get it by collaborating with others I think what we have to create are facilities that no other institutions or it would be difficult to get collaborative work with those other institutions we do that but it again boils down to the individuals who are doing the research and so I am confident that any one of us if they have a research interest and they need certain kinds of equipment they will find ways of getting access to those equipment or specialization if it needs to be a local collaboration or a building of capabilities then so be it if it's simply just tapping colleagues who are in other places and that can be done by our colleagues then so be it and that's I think what's happening now Okay So in terms of since ASP celebrating 25 it's 25th year is there anything that you think you should have done differently while you were an administrator? Oh it's a good question Oh let me see of had none really of had I think we maximize everything that in the conditions that we were faced with in those days no? I think we should have been a school a long time ago I think so but I would be admitting it really now with all honesty that was pushing it too far because we didn't really have the critical mass of people but in the last decade or so I suppose we have enough faculty enough students enough output I think we should transform into a proper school that's all I think that's the only thing but that's beyond our control anyway it's beyond our control So after 25 years we think we have reached a critical mass because I always hear you say critical mass We have we need a critical mass to transform the minds of people regarding archaeology That's a different matter a critical mass in transforming institution to the next level for example a redefinition of what archaeology is In my book archaeology is heritage but some of our colleagues will not agree with that and the second part but the question of whether we have reached a critical mass in transforming or influencing the way other Filipinos think about the past about their heritage we haven't reached that at all For the simple reason we are a singular institution even though we're UP and between the National Museum in UP that is not enough for the rest of the country We need an ASP in Mininau in Visayas in Northern Luzon in Southern Luzon and more ASPs will be that will be a critical mass Something that Robert Fox celebrated at late 1960s when he thought the future is bright for archaeology and everything but unfortunately it didn't pan out that way because the institutions didn't manage to sustain their programs and then there were personal it was a very personal practice of archaeology So if I understand correctly say in terms of research we've reached a critical mass Research-wise we have no problem How do we make research archaeology archaeological research relevant to non-archaeologists or non-academics because I think that's one of the greatest challenges that we face as archaeologists because we study the past but how how will this be relevant to us to other people in the present Well that's why I think to see archaeology as at the level of default as a heritage discipline is a crucial thinking because then it becomes our responsibility to create narratives that are not only relevant to our colleagues but are also easily translatable to a language that is understandable to communities So I've been experimenting on this but I never see myself proposing it as a best practice across the country but in my long-term projects in Palawan it's on its 17th year in the Bonta Peninsula on its 11th year, 12th year I thought it was easy just to create a heritage change the mindset of people by just sharing our information but it's harder than I thought it takes a long time so we're doing our best to do this but only because I think somewhere along the way in the future someone might be able to study these and look at it and then take the best out of it and maybe they will be the people who will be able to create all these models all these initiatives that can be adopted by the government by state institutions by private institutions that is my hope but as far as I'm concerned at the moment it's like a heritage I'm just really my heritage of my own research interests mentoring the area and then trying to create or see if we can uplift or transform at a high level the consciousness of people because my thinking is it's all very well that you enhance the economic conditions basic communities living around archaeological sites but that's not sustainable as soon as it become wealthy they will go somewhere else those individuals who succeed however it's my thinking if you lift their consciousness about the sense of place sense of belonging and archaeology and what we can offer substantially can do that then they will have a sense of pride of being there and so they will not they will be happy living where they are even when their economic conditions have improved substantially that's my thing so you refer to people who live within the sites you work on around the area or at least more local how about the greater Filipino community I'm afraid I'm not too optimistic I'm not focused there like I mentioned earlier then I hope that someone else catches this kind of this practice we're doing at a local level and then maybe they can be more successful in doing that but at this level I'm more interested in the in the effect the local effect so how long have you been practicing archaeology? oh since 1980 1987 I suppose so if you compare yourself now with the young man that you were in the 1980s have your passions changed or your interest changed my interest has has deepened my passion has also has is more profound unfortunately my health and my body the man 25, 30 years ago and so the adventure part is all in the mind out in the field but it's not like before oh there's a site up there I have to explore that you can do that now you should say to the young man oh there's a site up there could you go there with my camera shoot okay so that's the only difference the physical conditions of the individual has changed but the mental the mental passion I don't think as if anything it has become more interested in all of this so no no I will just give you an example just last year late last year I was going to confirm all this I'm interested in Agus and the river valley and I was and I wanted I want to find temple sites no temple sites and oh maybe the 10th century 12th, 13th no matter what and there are reports of ruins and so I went to these places but boy it was so difficult for me to track and everything but it's different just by the mind to go there and and of course they didn't pan out well they were all natural formations but that's still good but I am still interested in all that the discovery of things that that perhaps will answer questions that we are not sure of the current answers are very vague you know I'm still very interested in those things so can you say that you have reached your goal? oh I'm already in the bonus points no I have for me as an individual I've reached my goals everything that I wanted to do in life years back all of this is bonus for me I live a very very good life I would say you're still in contact with Dr. Azusa Lesar oh yes of course I am indeed it's okay I mean we collaborate and we argue a lot about many things we are interest overlap but we are like everyone else like us we have overlapping interests but the other interests that we have that are different from our overlapping interests you think you will retire from doing archeology you will stop my view is my view is I will kill over doing what I want to do that's my dream I don't think I'm one of those people and in UP there's so many of us like this that we will just like to do what we want to do until the day that we stop breathing that's how it is what would be your advice to a young scholar who wants to do a degree wants to do archeology well not only in archeology you just follow and pursue your passion and but for me and this is a question that many people ask me what is your favorite side what is your biggest discovery what is your favorite discovery and my answer to that is always been well first it was so very difficult to answer but I realize that for me what is interesting is to go to a place to investigate a question to excavate a landscape with a question in mind and then that question buds out multiplies to other questions if an archeological site or a research question is a singular question that is answered and it stops there then it's a boring site for me so it's the budding out it's the it's the creation of new questions coming out with your encounter with original questions that you ask yourself why you are there and for me that I am happy that it's very old I also don't mind if it's just 100 years old it is the questions that you ask yourself and the questions that come out of it after answering the original question that is the fascinating thing for me so it's hard to get bored hard to get bored you also said like of course archeology's teamwork it's collaboration how do you view your students and what's the best way to mentor your students the best way is not to dictate what they should be passionate about or what questions they want to answer or pursue or the research the best way for me is to get from those individuals what actually is interesting for them and then just to help them develop those interests provide them with facilities with potentials open windows and doors for them rather than get their hands and then carry them in one direction for me that is that is the better way and therefore people will develop or will find their own tracks and paths will become independent researchers scholars or students and hope they all become they all stop not being students of any interest they have especially in archeology you still think that macho culture is prevalent in ASP or in Philippine archeology we have transform a lot and I will say the period will be somewhere in the early not years maybe about 2008 or 2009 time line it's because now all genders are represented in the discipline of archeology and when we demonstrated that you don't have to be a hardcore field person to carry on the discipline and you can be someone who will be based in the lab you can be someone who is a curator in a museum and still practice archeology you can be someone who can just write and even out in the field you've run a lot of excavations grays and there are more therefore it's not a baseline anymore if anything and I think in our discipline danger gender representation will be the macho so in my thinking but I don't want that to be extinct all the tendency should be there but I don't want it also to be dominant anymore it is counterproductive at the end of it in all you have accomplished as an archeologist what do you think embody pagiging scholar ng bayan or being of service to the nation this is a very important and many people don't get it you can be a very a service critic of government you can even be a critic of the state of the nation but doesn't mean that you are not a champion of Filipino culture and so in my view it's a subtle but very important point to underscore that when we talk when we study the past we are studying ancestral Filipinos they are not Filipinos yet but if we learn more about them then it will make us learn understand ourselves better now but it doesn't mean because it is ancestral it's all good we don't want to go back chopping each other's heads but it's important to understand that we don't want to go back to all traditions of of our cosmologies or raiding, slave raiding et cetera but it's important to understand that and these are our ancestral cultural roots and that is a very important point to understand who we are as a collective of individuals from different ethnolinguistic groups but with so many commonalities and so even now we may be nationalists but when we are beyond nation states for example in the future it doesn't unravel the idea that we are a collective of cultures that have a very strong commonality of history and I think that is important to underscore but very difficult to explain and I don't think I explained it well kailangan may indindihan ng non-archaeology or even non-academics why pano tayo na hakatulong that is the problem we are not very good popular transmitters of knowledge we need people to we need to collaborate with people that are very good at that when we were young and cocky we thought we can do everything make a documentary write scripts, be popular then we were disabuse of that idea very quickly when our results ended up looking like their high school projects and I was really bad there's a reason why people are good there are other disciplines who are specializing on popularization et cetera and that is my critique also of institutions that demand from their especially academic institutions demand from their basic researchers to popularize their own basic researchers that's a very hard very very few people in the world it takes a different set of skills and talent and personality you have to have all of that and to demand that from everyone is quite a high level of demand idealistic ka parin yes I think so I'm optimistic I'm very optimistic about many things and I'm not never pessimistic about it I think let's talk about our university our university is much much better now than what it was in the past I think we are now truly a research university and we're transforming the culture the academic culture that is flowing underneath the different disciplines we have I believe in our lifetime we will see a truly interdisciplinary research approach to any research question that we put our minds to it and that's going to happen within our lifetime we've been talking about this since the 80s but now there are I think we're going to get there the very reason that the very existence of the ASP before you cannot get a degree in UP if you're not based in a college and college are disciplinal and then now we have the MC we have ASP we have so many other programs we have the open university where you don't have to be based in a discipline in a college to be given a degree and that is for me at 21st century direction given the relevant areas what steps did you take in creating academic culture not just within ASP but across the region okay well it was clear to me very early on that we have to be plug, link to virus networks and there are many ways to do this but we were lucky because the people who came before our generation were already linked to networks and for example the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association which is like our as you know it's like our Olympics every four years we have this big conference everyone sees everyone is working in the region across the Pacific Southeast Asia Southern China attended conference and we've always been a nominal participant in those conference but in 2006 we hosted it here at UP and we we had a very successful conference and people like what we did and people knew who we are and from there a lot of people developed their own networking and then we also and one example would be the Rasmus Mundus Network that came out of that with our European colleagues our French Italian and Spanish colleagues and which entailed us hosting European students to do mobility in the Philippines to experience excavating the Philippines and our students going to Europe to experience excavating in European archaeological sites there's something about mobility that's very important and I notice this with our students once they experience this you can see a change in their maturity in their intellectual maturity and even in their social maturity there's a substantial change so mobility mobility is very important to provide this to our students and then we encourage all of them to apply for all the small grants excavations in Angkorot Parian initiatives and and then we encourage local collaboration to happen too it is just unfortunate that we never really succeeded in producing like master students even our honor students or diploma students I mean from Asian countries there are always there's inquiry there's interest but it always boils down to resources and we don't have enough infrastructural facilities in the region to provide scholarship of that sort and so what happens we go to Europe where there's still even now much reduced but there's still institutional support for our and Southeast Asian archaeologists to go there and study for many and get their degrees so perhaps another not regret but I see maybe a failure that we never managed to produce a Southeast Asian archaeologist Nat Pinoy in terms of formal degrees at ASP maybe that's for the future but again networking is very important How about multidisciplinary approaches? How important is that in doing archaeology? Very important there in a multidisciplinary approach the way I see it there's a question coming from a discipline and then that discipline then gathers specialists from other disciplines to try to answer that question and interdisciplinary approach will be there's a common question in the middle and different disciplines contribute to answer that question so we have many examples of multi a good example there will be how the our genetics colleagues retool themselves to become equipped to address questions of population genetics and then later on to again contribute to research on ancient DNA so for example now we have Dr. Mike Herrera who is specializing in ancient DNA of animal remains but collaborating now with Dr. Cora Nyongria of genetics who again is someone who expanded and retooled and trained herself to new approaches to genetic studies beyond her initial training and then we have in that big project that we have now we have people from linguistics from history addressing a common question not generated from a singular discipline but the common question about us being Pinoy's so that is something that if you that is something that we dreamt of back in the 80s and even earlier than that but now we can see an actual practice of this in research in 2019 the Philippines had the discovery of the century so the homologinensis and of course a year or two before that there was the Kalinga Rhino with indirect evidence of human activity at 700,000 years ago and then your studies in Palawan and in Agusan, Mindoro and Katanawan were studies of our colleagues in different parts of the Philippines how do you think this all relate to understanding ourselves as Filipinos in terms of our identity and nation building these sites are from different time periods different places in the Philippines they yielded different artifacts so how do they relate to present day Filipinos in terms of identity and nation building I see questions of understanding identity and nation building as two different concerns although they overlap of course it's important to know who you are to be able to be to contribute to nation building but nation building for me is more of a a tactical objective that the knowing who we are goes beyond that and any discovery that comes from basic research I think will contribute both ways for example if we take the discovery of the rhinoceros with cut marks and stone tools and the declaration and acceptance of the existence of other species of homo homo-lucinensis these are very important very important discoveries and presentation of warrants to the idea that we as a population of modern humans in the Philippines we are connected to the overall history of humanity at a very early stages of its transformation and I will say that in nation building that can be used of course right but more importantly in any kind of new information that will enrich our understanding of the past will enrich the way we appreciate ourselves and so these are things that are that are I will say parallel concerns you can be very much interested in nation building and of course maybe not too much interested in the detailings of that comes out of basic research but I will argue that if you're interested in understanding who we are as a collective through time as a people then the concern with knowing who are pinoy's now and why do we behave this way will always be further clarified with more synthesis of information coming from our basic research and so this is something hard to understand to appreciate if the timeline of people is very short if it's like sound bites no the super spectaculars get good sound bite the mundane results right don't get those sound bites and maybe that's where we come in when we write our synthesis books which may not be that popular writing but when that comes out then people can can use it right should you write in Filipino or English? ah you have to ask your audience very immediately if you're in Arlingo Franca and it's English if you want to be read by your colleagues in any country in any part of the world if you write in English that's Arlingo Franca but if you say you want to directly engage Filipinos then you write in Filipino do you write for archeologists or do you write for the Filipino people? it's a very good question normally I write for archeologists but in the past I've attempted to write site reports in Filipino but it's a dilemma definitely but definitely I write in Filipino if it's very clear to me this is for the Filipino audience my coming book is written in Filipino but it's social banditry there's materiality of culture but it's not more history than archeology but archeologically the books that I'm going to write will be most in English until the time that there will be more I suppose until I tell myself no no this book is going to be written for Pinoy rather than for the the academic archeological community alright well thank you very much for your time and I know that many people will learn from our discussion from our conversation and we hope for the best regarding in terms of your research and in terms of your health thank you very much Grace