Belated Happy Birthday to Gov. Gwendolyn F. Garcia, who marked her 54th birthday last Monday with a flurry of activities. She started with a hectic meeting with all the barangay captains of the province at the Cebu International Convention Center to launch the next round of the Expanded Green and Wholesome Environment that Nurtures Our Cebu (eGwen Our Cebu), among others.

National Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro was also on hand to sign the agreement to return Camp Lapu-lapu to the province exactly 50 years after it was leased to the Armed Forces of the Philippines by Gov. Jose L. Briones.

The evening party at the Marco Polo Hotel was quite a surprise for me as I saw a lot of members of the administration party and some from the opposition led by no less than former president Joseph Estrada, who is the governor?s compadre after he stood in as a sponsor in the recent wedding of the governor?s daughter Cristina to Liloan Mayor Duke Frasco. Perhaps it only goes to show as what many in the media are saying: the governor is keeping her political cards close to her chest. And she?s not saying yet who she will support as presidential candidate in the coming elections.

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I had to go to Daan Bantayan yesterday to see for myself some sites that were purported to contain untold archaeological treasures that were looted in the 1970s and those still waiting to be uncovered. I came home enriched and enthralled by thoughts and possibilities of new knowledge should a scientific excavation of the remaining sites be carried out soon.

The committee on sites, relics and structures, one of three organized by Gov. Gwen, has been supportive of archaeological projects carried out in coordination with the National Museum, the sole agency tasked with carrying out excavations in the country.

Proof of this are the archaeological finds now on display at Museo Sugbo, at the USC Museum as well as those in the Boljoon Parish Museum.

But if the stories I got in Daan Bantayan are indeed true, then the artifacts recovered from a 1.4-km stretch beachfront in the 1970s date even earlier than those we recovered from Plaza Independencia and Boljoon. An informant on site, a former barangay captain, told me that the gold recovered from this particular site comprised small gear-like pieces that when strewn together would form a tight necklace containing 300 to 500 of those same gears or tiny crowns. He also told me about the gold-studded teeth or ?bansil? akin to those recovered in Brgy. Bantigue, Bantayan ? the Vince Escario collection ? that are on display at the archeological gallery of the Museo Sugbo.

I cannot overemphasize this fact: the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Museum and the Ayala Museum have the largest collection of pre-Hispanic gold ever recovered from burial sites. But not a single one of those on display in these museums contains an iota of archaeological information worth publishing. In short, they are products of the incessant grave robbing, treasure hunting and looting that characterized the antique-collecting world of the 1970s and 1980s. Variously estimated to date between the 12th and the 14th century A.D., these gold jewelry pieces offer a peek at the kind of barter trading that made the wearing of such jewels quite an ordinary affair in those times. For the moment, we can only surmise what these pieces meant to their wearers.

Thankfully, Boljoon provided so much wealth of information concerning golden jewelry produced in the early 16th century. When we shall have excavated this site, I certainly hope we shall have finally put an absolute date to these earlier pieces and these will hopefully come from Daan Bantayan.