A team of archeologists from the University of San Carlos led by Dr. Rosa Tenazas in 1967 discovered our country’s oldest crematorium in Pinagbayanan, Pila, Laguna.  It measured 330 cm wide by 85 cm high and was dated to the thirteenth to fourteenth century.  They reported that the stoneworks are more or less an elaborate arrangement of two upright stones 33 centimeters high with width of 17 centimeters in front to 15 centimeters on the sides.  They also noted that the uprights stand on a slab of about equal thickness except that the slabs have a length of 50 centimeters.  Capping the two upright stones is a lintel 55 centimeters long, 18 centimeters thick and 24 centimeters wide.  The underside was carved to form a slight arch.

Tenazas wrote in her report that the cremation burials in Pinagbayanan were secondary cremations.  After undergoing primary burial to allow time for the flesh to decompose, the bones were collected and burned in a ritual before actual burial.  She mentioned that the practice of the burning of the exhumed bones is an act of purification to wipe away unatoned sins.  The team was able to recover red ochre basins with a diameter of 40 to 50 centimeters used for burning disarticulated skeletal remains.  They also recovered a cremation burial in a brown spherical jar on top of a similar red ochre basin.  She noted that ethnography shows no example of a secondary cremation burial practice among existing primitive groups in the Philippines.

According to William Henry Scott, pre-hispanic cremation burial has only been studied in one place, Pila (Laguna).  He wrote that only people belonging to the Maginoo class or noble class practice secondary burial or bone washing in the 16th century.

The crematorium is probably the oldest structure that used adobe here in the Philippines.  In the 1613 Vocabulario Lengua Tagala printed here in our town, San Buenaventura wrote appropriately in page 482 piedra blanda (soft stone) in tagalog means pila.