Kiyyangan

Kiyyangan lies in the Ifugao mountains of northern Luzon, above the valley of the Ibulao River. Ifugao origin stories remember it as an ancestral settlement and a place where rice was introduced. Families held fields and cultivated mountain slopes; the wealth of leading households was measured in part by their rice terraces.

Spanish expeditions reached the wider region in the sixteenth century, but the Ifugao resisted incorporation into colonial rule. Archaeological research at Old Kiyyangan points to the growth of intensive wet-rice cultivation during the colonial period, rather than an unbroken history of thousands of years. Terraces, irrigation channels, forests and gardens formed a linked landscape, sustained by the labour and knowledge of the communities who lived among the mountains.