Suchergebnisse

'They used to see this woman carrying a large stone on her head. She had a baby . some say that she carried her baby in her arms, others that she carried the baby in a pocket of her dress, others that the baby was placed in a sling across her body; in her pocket were more than 300 square metres worth of broad beans; she also had four kilograms of flax; when she walked she ate beans, worked the flax, and steadied the stone on her head. In Gozo she built the small stone hut at Ta'Ċenċ, called Id-Dura tal-Mara. From there she carried the stones to Ġgantija, in Xagħra, as she had carried the standing stone to Qala, and the stones to Borġ Għarib near Għajnsielem. On the Ta' Ċenċ heights, on the windswept plateau, there is a construction similar to Ġgantija, and along the edge there are remains of many stones forming a wall. Even these were carried by this woman. About the standing stone they say that it was carried by a woman one and a half times taller than the stone. She used to climb over it to work flax. In her pockets she could hold more than 600 square metres worth of broad beans.' ; peer-reviewed

The study presented in this chapter aims to complement the earlier GIS study of nineteenth century ad land-use of the islands of Gozo and Malta by Alberti et al. (2018) by adding another dimension to the reconstruction of the human exploitation of the landscape, and thus provide a better understanding of the agricultural potential and productivity of the Maltese landscape. It locates potential pastoral foraging routes across the landscape with the aid of a Geographic Information System. While the method and procedures used to accomplish this goal are detailed in the following section, the availability of a model of agricultural productivity of the land on the one hand, and a repertoire of evidence directly and indirectly related to pastoral movements across the island (such as the location of the garrigue areas, public spaces and farmhouses with animal pens) provided sufficient grounds to undertake this research. This approach was meant both to enrich the interpretation of evidence dating to earlier/pre-modern periods and to suggest a range of archaeological and anthropological questions as well as new avenues of inquiry driven by the results of analyses of a better documented (however recent) period. Modelling of the agricultural quality in Malta on the basis of the data provided by mid-1800s cadastral maps (cabrei) showed that the Maltese landscape is a complex patchwork as far as its suitability for human economic exploitation is concerned (Alberti et al. 2018). The analysis made it evident that there is a wide variability in land quality, even over small distances, because of a complex interplay between different natural and cultural factors, resulting in a fragmented and variable landscape. The modelled agricultural suitability also showed that a considerably large part of Malta is unlikely to have been optimal for agriculture during the early modern period. This holds true for the thin-soiled and scrub-covered karstland (or garrigue areas; in Maltese: moxa and xagħri) which features as a relatively large part of the Maltese landscape, such as the flat-topped Upper Coralline Limestone plateaus in the west-central part of the island. It has been observed that farmhouses with animal pens, as well as public spaces or wasteland, are located at the very fringe of (and/or amongst) these uncultivated areas. It has also been stressed that this apparently unproductive landscape has been turned into an important part of the agrarian economy. Importantly, the uncultivated areas provided (and to an extent still provide) grazing grounds for sheep and goats, quarried stone for construction, brushwood for fuel, as well as herbs, greens, wild game and flowering plants for bee pasture (Blouet 1963; Forbes 1996; Lang 1961; Rolé 2007; Wettinger 1982). ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727). ; peer-reviewed

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

Molluscs often have quite specific environmental requirements (Evans 1978, 82; Giusti et al. 1995; Schembri et al. 2018). Many species require only a few square metres of habitat, so they are excellent micro-habitat indicators. Their shells can be dispersed, for instance by running water, but generally, compared with other biotic materials used in palaeoecology (such as pollen grains or seeds), they do not disperse far from their life habitat and therefore provide important indications of local environments. Alkaline sediments, which are very common in the Maltese Islands, will preserve molluscan shells and other calcareous biogenic material over thousands of years. This makes the analysis of molluscan shells potentially a very important tool for the reconstruction of past environments in Malta. Geologists and archaeologists recognized the value of molluscs as palaeoenvironmental indicators as early the first quarter of the nineteenth century ad (Conybeare 1824; Preece 1998; Evans & O'Connor 2005, 41). Molluscan analysis is still, however, comparatively rare as a palaeoenvironmental tool, and for instance is less commonly used than pollen analysis (e.g. Preece 1998, 158; Fenech 2007). In the Maltese Islands, the application of the technique has been limited and there has been no comprehensive palaeoenvironmental study using molluscan analysis. Trechmann (1938), Giusti et al. (1995) and Hunt (1997) used the sporadic occurrence of land snails in Maltese Quaternary deposits as an indication that these had accumulated in open, exposed conditions. The highly cemented Quaternary deposits precluded anything other than the production of species lists by these authors. Pedley (1980) suggested a brackish depositional environment for the Pleistocene Fiddien Valley Tufa on molluscan evidence. Fenech (2007) and Marriner et al. (2012) analysed cores taken in Holocene estuarine deposits at Marsa and Burmarrad, respectively. These studies showed the progress of the Holocene marine transgression and the infilling of the estuaries, and Fenech (2007) also showed the persistence of open, exposed terrestrial environments in the catchment of the Marsa estuary over c. 7000 years. At the Neolithic Xagħra Brochtorff Circle (Schembri et al. 2009) and the Neolithic and later temple site at Tas-Silġ (Fenech & Schembri 2015), molluscan analysis demonstrated long histories of anthropogenic disturbance and sparse vegetation since the later Neolithic, but a considerable portion of these studies was done on shells recovered by troweling and dry sieving with a large fraction and therefore subject to a form of taphonomic bias caused by the exclusion of most very small taxa. Analysis of a cave fill near Victoria on Gozo, based on assemblages recovered by sieving, identified a phase of spectacular erosion caused by Classical period agricultural practices, followed by a more stable grazed landscape in the Medieval and post-Medieval periods (Hunt & Schembri 2018). Inevitably, the research done before the start of the FRAGSUS Project was very partial in coverage. The environmental history of the Maltese Islands was still largely unknown. [excerpt] ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727). ; peer-reviewed

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

The ERC-funded FRAGSUS Project (Fragility and sustainability in small island environments: adaptation, culture change and collapse in prehistory, 2013–18) led by Caroline Malone (Queen's University Belfast) has focused on the unique Temple Culture of Neolithic Malta, and its antecedents and successors through investigation of archaeological sites and monuments. This, the second volume of three, presents the results of excavations at four temple sites and two settlements, together with analysis of chronology, economy and material culture. The project focused on the integration of three key strands of Malta's early human history (environmental change, human settlement and population) set against a series of questions that interrogated how human activity impacted on the changing natural environment and resources, which in turn impacted on the Neolithic populations. The evidence from early sites together with the human story preserved in burial remains reveals a dynamic and creative response over millennia. The scenario that emerges implies settlement from at least the mid-sixth millennium bc, with extended breaks in occupation, depopulation and environmental stress coupled with episodes of recolonization in response to changing economic, social and environmental opportunities. Excavation at the temple site of Santa Verna (Gozo) revealed an occupation earlier than any previously dated site on the islands, whilst geophysical and geoarchaeological study at the nearby temple of Ġgantija revealed a close relationship with a spring, Neolithic soil management, and evidence for domestic and economic activities within the temple area. A targeted excavation at the temple of Skorba (Malta) revisited the chronological questions that were first revealed at the site over 50 years ago, with additional OSL and AMS sampling. The temple site of Kordin III (Malta) was explored to identify the major phases of occupation and to establish the chronology, a century after excavations first revealed the site. Settlement archaeology has long been problematic in Malta, overshadowed by the megalithic temples, but new work at the site of Taċ-Ċawla (Gozo) has gathered significant economic and structural evidence revealing how subsistence strategies supported agricultural communities in early Malta. A study of the second millennium bc Bronze Age site of In-Nuffara (Gozo) likewise has yielded significant economic and chronological information that charts the declining and changing environment of Malta in late prehistory. ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

The transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age has always been a focus of considerable debate (Bonanno 1993a & b; Stoddart 1999, 141) (see Volume 2, Chapter 10), ever since the transition was recognized, most prominently by Zammit in Tarxien temple. Early debate dwelt on substantial changes in material culture and rites of death, and emphasized the abandonment silts of the Tarxien temple detected by Zammit (1930, 45–7; Evans 1971, 149–51). These data, interpreted in a cultural historical framework, suggested that not only was there radical change in the population, but a substantial period of abandonment (Trump 1961a & b, 303; Evans 1971, 224). As more stratigraphies began to be investigated at Skorba, Xagħra Brochtorff Circle and Tas-Silġ in the second half of the twentieth century, distinct relationships between the two succeeding societies were suggested, as outlined in the previous Chapter 6. What is becoming clearer is that the so-called Bronze Age transition emerged in the final centuries of the third millennium bc, evolved, albeit in punctuated and uneven steps through to its demise at the start of the first millennium bc and lasted a remarkable 1200 years or so. It remains a complex and still poorly understood episode of distinctive ceramics, monuments and landscapes that deserves better understanding and chronological refinement, through fresh problem oriented fieldwork similar to the FRAGSUS Project. [excerpt] ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727). ; peer-reviewed

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).

There is now a large degree of synergy exhibited by the various classes of palaeoenvironmental data investigated through the FRAGSUS Project on Malta and Gozo and the direct inter-linkages and associations of aspects of the environment with human activities during the last 8000 years. The geological setting and well dated palynological, molluscan and soil/sediment data present a background picture of vegetational and landscape change throughout the Holocene, with some very specific data on trajectories of clearance, erosion and farming activities in various valleys of the Maltese landscape. Nested within this broader framework, there is an immense amount of more specific data on the development of and changes in palaeosols, the frequencies and types of soil erosion and formation of valley fill sequences, as well as the dynamics of near-shore, valley and plateaux landscapes through prehistoric and historic times in both Malta and Gozo. Within these, there is an exceptional amount of data concerning the impacts of the first farming communities and the resilience of these island landscapes during the Neolithic period between the seventh and third millennia bc. The following summative interpretational sections attempt to draw out the main themes and trajectories of landscape change that have occurred during the Holocene in the Maltese archipelago. ; This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727). ; peer-reviewed

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007-2013) (Grant agreement No. 323727).