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Problems of Maltese Prehistory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

J. B. Ward-Perkins
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Extract

Malta has never lacked history. That melancholy fact is indeed all too apparent today and must be held to justify the publication of the necessarily ill-digested record of a preliminary survey of its antiquities undertaken during the six months before the outbreak of war. If further excuse be needed, it must be sought in the intrinsic interest of the prehistoric remains, as well as in the important bearing which they have upon wider problems of Mediterranean archaeology. Much work still remains to be done on these remains; but a brief summary of the results achieved in the last twenty years is not perhaps out of place at the present time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 16 , Issue 61 , March 1942 , pp. 19 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1942

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References

1 See M.A. Murray, Excavations in Malta (Quaritch), 1, pp. 6-13 ; 11, pp. 1-18, for an account of Miss G. Caton-Thompson’s excavations in 1922. Dr Baldachino has since traced the prolongation of the fissure on the opposite bank of the Wied Dalam, proving conclusively that its formation preceded the cutting of the Wied. Professor D. A. E. Garrod assures me that the identification of the teeth as belonging to Homo neanderthalensis is more than doubtful.

2 R. Vaufrey, ‘Les Eléphants nains des Iles méditerranéennes et la question des isthmes pleistocenes’, Archives de l’Institut de Paléontologie humaine, Mem. 6, 1929, 220.

3 L. Ugolini, Malta : origini della civiltà mediterranea, 1930.

4 See D. Mackenzie, ‘Dolmens and Nuraghi of Sardinia’, Papers of the British School at Rome (1913), VI, 127-70.

5 T. Ashby however in Antiquaries Journal (1924), IV, 93-100, on the basis of supplementary excavations, accepts Zammit’s relative chronology, although the evidence quoted is not conclusive in this respect.

6 This feature is even more strikingly marked on Miss Murray’s other published plan (op. cit. pi. vin ; followed by Zammit, fig. 8). The present condition of the ruins unfortunately does not permit verification.

7 Malta : origini della civiltà mediterranea, p. 150, fig. 22.

8 C. F. C. Hawkes, The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe (1940), p. 153.

9 N. Tagliaferro, Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, in, p. 1 ff.

10 C. F. C. Hawkes, The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe (1940), pp. 153-4.

11 Papers of the British School at Rome, V, 149 ff.

12 Interim report in Annual Reports of the Museum Department, Malta.

13 Ptolemy, IV, 3, 37, describes the temple and its situation. Quintinus, auditor to Grand Master Villiers de l’Isle Adam, writing in 1532, identifies the classical temple with the prehistoric and medieval structures at Borg-en-Nadur. See A. A. Caruana, Report on the Phoenicean and Roman Antiquities in the Group of Islands of Malta (Malta, 1882), pp. 17, 19 ; also M. A. Murray, Excavations in Malta, 1, p. 21 and Appendix 1.

14 Papers of the British School at Rome, VI, pp. 105 ff.

15 ibid. 34 ff.

16 N. Tagliaferro, Man (1911), XI, 147 ff. ; Papers of the British School at Rome, VI, 12. Within the natural cave were the remains of at least 35 bodies, each buried beneath a flat slab supported on smaller stones.

17 Antiquaries Journal (1928), VIII, pp. 481-3. At least two other examples are recorded—at Bukana, near Attard, and Xaghra, Gozo. In each case the remains were heavily stained with red pigment.