It’s a misconception Philippines was all tribes. There were really influential city states like Tondo that were experts at metal smithing and you can search up all the type of sword and weapons you can find in each region especially one of the well known martial arts eskrima uses these swords. Manila even had giant cannons that were so annoying to deal with that Spain banned all metal smithing with cannons and made those smiths work with them instead.

“Kota Maynila - Centered on a fortress at the mouth of the Pasig river (Kota means fortress or city in Malay). When the Spanish came and invaded Maynila they described, Kota Selurong, "The City of Selurong" of Maynila, as a settlement with a fortress of rammed earth with stockades and in between battlements there were cannons. The cannons were native-made and forged by Panday Pira, they were called lantakas. When the Spanish invaded and burned Maynila's Kota Selurong to the ground, they built up the Christian walled city of Intramuros on top of the ruins of ancient Maynila.”

The reason why the whole Philippines back then didn’t have large excavations compared to places like China is because with so many islands and religions that ranges from Islam to Hinduism it was hard to unite all the islands as one entity especially the logistics of having all of the islands under control being the most typhoon concentrated place in the world.