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Mobility and transitions: the south central Mediterranean on the eve of history.
... By contrast, lavas from the seven Aeolian Islands (Alicudi, Filicudi, Salina, Panarea, Lipari, Vulcano and Stromboli) represent the nearest SZVR to be compared with the calc-alkaline basaltic andesite samples. This is also supported by the literature on the cultural contacts between Malta and the Aeolian Archipelago in the period related to the use of the investigated querns (Trump 1966(Trump , 2002Bonanno and Militello 2008;Vella 2008;Copat et al. 2010;Vella et al. 2011;Cazzella et al. 2020). Recognition of the provenance of the studied volcanic grinding tools is of paramount importance to trace exchange networks between Malta and areas within the Central Mediterranean region. ...
The lava used to make saddle-querns recovered from the prehistoric megalithic temple complex of Tarxien (Malta), cannot have originated in the Maltese Archipelago because it consists entirely of sedimentary rocks. The National Museum of Archaeology (Malta) permitted the sampling of three damaged querns which were recognized among those reported from the site by the excavator, Themistocles Zammit in the early twentieth century. The volcanic samples were studied according to the igneous petrology methodology and belong to two different rock types and magmatic series, namely alkaline basalt (one quern) and calc-alkaline basaltic andesites (two querns). The petrographic classification of these millstones thus suggests a provenance from volcanoes which are represented by extrusives with a magmatic and plate tectonics geodynamic fingerprint of both ocean island basalts (OIB) and subduction zone-related volcanic rocks (SZVR). The provenance areas for the volcanic querns studied are the island of Linosa or the Hyblean Mountains (Sicily) for the alkaline basalt and the Aeolian Archipelago for the two calc-alkaline basaltic andesites. Accordingly, all the investigated grinding stones from Malta come from the neighbouring areas of the Central Mediterranean, thus confirming the existence of a strong exchange network between the Maltese Archipelago and the eastern Sicilian areas in the Late Neolithic (early to mid-3rd millennium BCE) and the Early Bronze Age (Tarxien Cemetery Phase ca. 2100 − 1500 BCE).
... There is no obvious reason that would have prevented the people of Malta to access the Aegean or other regions for metals if unalloyed copper artifacts proved unsatisfactory. However, considering the evidence of intense interactions between Sicily and Malta documented by the distribution of the Maltese Borġ in-Nadur pottery type in Sicily (Tanasi 2011a(Tanasi , 2015 and of Sicilian Middle and Late Bronze age artifacts in the Maltese archipelago (Tanasi 2011b), it seems likely that metallurgy was introduced in Malta via Sicily, which was more exposed to contacts with Mycenaean travelers. ...
The amount of prehistoric metal items discovered in the Maltese archipelago during the BronzeAge very limited in number. The majority of the artifacts are traditionally considered Aegean imports from nearby Sicily. Nineteen objects, currently on display in the National Archaeological Museum of Valletta, and dated between the 17th and 12th century BCE, represent the main evidence of metalwork in Malta during the Bronze Age. Daggers, axes, vessels, rings, pins and an ingot were found in Early and Middle/Late Bronze Age sites and were traditionally interpreted as made from bronze solely on the account of a direct visual exam. The aim of this contribution is to present the results of research carried out on those artifacts applying non-destructive portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) in order to ascertain their chemical composition, to compare the data with those available for Sicily and the Aegean and discuss the archaeological implications of such outcomes.
Third version of the ongoing bibliography research for the Neolithic Temple Period in Malta. APA version.
Two and a half years after the first version, this second version of the Bibliography of the Temple Builder Period is finally available.
It contains at this moment 1008 references which is estimated at 35-40% of all publications.
All references are individually validated by consulting the sources themselves.
As the list of documents is constantly growing it became useful to separate it into several categories.
- Malta's Temple Builder Society (656) - Maltese Neolithic (21)
- Neolithic outside Malta (8)
- Non-Neolithic archaeology (36)
- Background sciences (50)
- Conservation and valorisation (190)
- Reviews (47)
This bibliography contains at this moment 547 references which is estimated at 20% of all the publications.
The bibliography is on-going work of the Gaia-online project which is part of the Gaia project. The Gaia project is a innovative artificial intelligence initiative composed of an ecosystem of servers that should become a general artificial intelligence. The Gaia Online component is the story telling element that generates knowledge acquired by Gaia in the form of stories (See a beta version of Gaia-online at https://www.gaia-online.eu/). The very first stages of these story telling capabilities will be centered around the Temple Builder Period of Malta. The information about this period of Malta's prehistory will be extracted from all the available publications.
This bibliography is made for the convenience of other researchers in two forms (bibtex and APA) and will be updated regularly.
The end of prehistory in the Maltese archipelago is characterized by the production of a problematic class of pottery, until now attested just at the site of Baħrija, on the western coast of Malta. Such a production represents a break with the tradition in terms of repertoire of shapes, style and technology and it has been interpreted as the result of contact between locals and foreign immigrants. The recent overall reappraisal of the unpublished ceramic assemblage collected during the excavations carried out at Baħrija, represents a unique opportunity to focus on the technological aspects of the production, trying to shed light on the issue of the break with the tradition and the impact of external influxes. Petrographic analysis on thin sections and chemical analyses via X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) and laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (LA-ICP-MS) have been carried out to characterize the Baħrija pottery production in order to interpret from a different angle the issue of the possible arrival of newcomers and establishment of a foreign enclave in Malta, which until now has been hypothesized only on the basis of the sudden emergence of the Baħrija pottery.
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