J. Barns and A. Labrador provided support for this research as well as G. Concepcion and M. dela Cruz Jr. The Kalinga excavation project was funded by the French Department for Foreign Affairs (Project MARCHE, to T.I.), The National Museum of The Philippines (to C.J.-o. and M.C.R.), The University of the Philippines Diliman Research Grant of the Office of Vice President for Academic Affairs (to T.I.) and the European Social Fund (Project ISOLARIO, NSRF Thalis-UOA, to G.L.). T.I. also received funding from a National Geographic Global Exploration grant (HJ-035R-17), from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (GDRi PalBiodivASE with Valéry Zeitoun), from Sorbonne Universités (Project MH@SU TAPHO), from the Société des Amis du Musée de l’Homme and from the LabEx BCDiv. G.D.v.d.B. received funding from an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future fellowship (FT100100384). J.d.V. received funding from the Quaternary and Prehistory Erasmus Mundus Program. Additional funding was provided by the Embassy of France to the Philippines and by the Rizal Municipality. M.G.C. received funding from CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. We thank S. Hayes for her feedback on the manuscript; M.-M. Blanc-Valleron for providing access to the X-ray diffractometer; A. Ledoze, S. Puaud, V. Scao, S. Baillon, H. Guillou, J. Marteau, M. Bigerelle, R. Deltombe, D. Borshneck and F. Demory for their valuable help in the laboratory analyses.

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Nature thanks M. Duval, J. Kappelman, R. Potts and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.