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The Later Prehistory of Malta

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

D. H. Trump
D. H. Trump
Affiliation:
The Museum, Valletta, Malta
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Extract

For many years down to 1953, our knowledge of Maltese prehistory could be summed up succinctly if rather unkindly in the phrase—‘Neolithic 3,000 B.C., Bronze Age 2,000, Punic 1,000.’ In that year, J. D. Evans's researches were published in these Proceedings. These at last provided a framework for his Period I, no longer called ‘Neolithic’ because the overlap of its later phases with metal-using cultures in nearby Sicily made it unlikely that metal was quite unknown. It was assigned a duration from the mid-second to mid-first millennium B.C. The absolute chronology will need revision in the light of the C-14 dates not then available and the correlations with the Sicilian development have met with some criticism. In any case, the isolation of the different phases was an enormous advance on which all further work in Malta will have to be based, even if, as at the time of writing begins to seem likely, certain amendments to the sequence become necessary. The later prehistoric Period II, lasting down to the 9th century when the Phoenician settlement opened Period III, was described in much less detail.

Enormous quantities of material of the first period, megalithic buildings as well as pottery and small finds, were available for study: the material remains of Period II were much more scanty, there being in effect at that time only a single site known of each of its three phases, which were correspondingly named after the Tarxien Cemetery, Borġ in-Nadur and Baħrija. In 1956, Evans published a more detailed study of the first of these phases bringing forward evidence for attributing to it the local dolmens. Phases II B and C were not ready for such treatment as the only excavations were at Borġ in-Nadur in 1881 (a sketch plan found in a Valletta photographer's shop twenty years later being the only record) and 1921-7 (disturbed levels overlying a Period I temple); and at Baħrija in 1909 (three days' work). These two phases therefore remained the most urgent problem in the prehistory of Malta. Accordingly, further excavation was undertaken on their type sites by the Museum Department of the Maltese Government in the spring and autumn of 1959.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 27 , December 1961 , pp. 253 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1961

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References

page 253 note 1 ‘The Prehistoric Culture-Sequence in the Maltese Archipelago,’ PPS, XIX (1953), p. 41Google Scholar. The sites dealt with in this article appear at numbers 25 and 26 of his fig. 1, p. 42.

page 253 note 2 Antiquity, XXXIV (1960), p. 132Google Scholar, with a reply on p. 218. The writer finds himself on the whole in closer agreement with Professor Evans than with Professor Brea on the foreign correlations and interpretation of the Maltese material. Until C-14 dates become available it is unwise to be dogmatic about the absolute chronology of the earlier phases.

page 253 note 3 PPS, XXII (1956), p. 85Google Scholar.

page 253 note 4 Mayr, A., Die vorgeschichtlichen Denkmäler von Malta (1901), p. 687Google Scholar. English translation, Prehistoric Malta (1908), p. 61Google Scholar.

page 253 note 5 Murray, M., Excavations in Malta, I (1923)Google Scholar; II (1925); III (1929).

page 253 note 6 Peet, T. E., Papers of the B.S.R., V (1910), p. 149Google Scholar.

page 254 note 1 The excavation staff consisted of the author, two museum labourers, and volunteer assistants, of whom Mrs V. Greer, Mrs I. Ainley, Miss B. Testaferrata and Mrs S. Grossmith deserve special mention.

The trenches were refilled at the end of the work.

page 257 note 1 Ann. Rep. Mus. Dept. Malta (1959–60 and 1960); Antiquity (1942), p. 34Google Scholar.

page 258 note 1 Peet, op. cit.

page 258 note 2 It was carried out by the author, one labourer, Miss B. Testaferrata, Mrs V. Greer and Mr W. Phelps, with occasional help from other volunteers.

page 258 note 3 Discovered in 1956 by Cmdr. and Mrs A. Woolner.

page 258 note 4 The silo pits were published in the Annual Report of the Museum Department of Malta (1959–60).

page 259 note 1 Torre Castelluccia, unpublished sherds in Taranto Museum; Nevigata, Coppa, Mon. Ant., XIX (1908)Google Scholar, Tav. iv, 9.

page 260 note 1 Evans (1953), op. cit.

page 260 note 2 Its start may well, of course, go back to the date Brea suggested in his Antiquity article, op. cit.

page 260 note 3 Brea, , Sicily before the Greeks, p. 134Google Scholar.

page 261 note 1 Bull, di Paletn. Italiana, N.S., LXV (1956), p. 73Google Scholar, fig. 48 f.

page 261 note 2 Loc. cit. It was then considered a tomb.

page 262 note 1 Oddly the name ‘Baħrija’ is derived from ‘baħar’, meaning ‘the sea’.

page 262 note 2 See a note by the author in Antiquity (1960), p. 295Google Scholar.