Anthony Bonanno

Cult in an Island Society: Prehistoric Malta in the Tarxien Period

This paper examines the cult practices of the Tarxien period on Malta (c. 3000–c. 2500 BC) within the wider context of island societies. A model of ritual organization is developed which emphasizes the isolation of Malta during the major phases of temple building. A comparison is made between two pairs of sites each comprising a temple and burial component, Tarxien and Hal Saflieni, Ggantija and the Brochtorff Circle. A more detailed comparison is made between the more recently excavated examples: the Tarxien temple and the Brochtorff Circle mortuary complex. The latter is the subject on an ongoing Anglo-Maltese project directed by the authors. The analysis moves in turn from the constituent units (or modules) of which these sites are composed, to their overall configuration, and finally to their place in the landscape and to the place of Malta in the central Mediterranean.

Monuments in an island society: The Maltese context

Abstract The paper presents an alternative view of the social forces behind the construction of the Maltese temples, in the light of new evidence from recent excavations. Access analysis and the social anthropological theory of networks in island communities are introduced as aids in the analysis of the parallel programme of funerary and temple architecture in the Maltese islands that had its origin in the late fifth millennium cal. BC and came to an abrupt end in the mid‐third millennium cal. BC. It is suggested that intra‐community rivalry could have provided the mobilization of resources for the phases of construction of the temples and that centralized social forces need not have been as important as has been suggested in previous work. In this light, the end to temple construction need not be seen as a major social collapse, but as the end of one means of fighting with material culture.

Cyrenaican funerary portraits in Malta

The Museum Department of Malta possesses among its rich collection of antiquities, both local and foreign, a set of six portraits which should be appended to the remarkable series of Cyrenaican funerary busts studied and published by Miss Elizabeth Rosenbaum. Four of these busts (I–IV) are exhibited among the sculptures in the ‘Roman Villa’ Museum at Rabat and the other two (V and VI) are stored in the basement of the National Museum in Valletta. It is not in the least surprising that Miss Rosenbaum omitted these busts in her otherwise most comprehensive catalogue of Cyrenaican portraits, which included those scattered in various European collections. The reason for this omission is that these sculptures have either been classified incorrectly or never published. The first to publish four of these portraits (I–IV) was Thomas Ashby, who gave only a short description of them without attempting a typological classification; he even called one ‘a little Phoenician in character’ and another ‘rather Etruscan-looking’. Shortly after, T. Zammit repeated, almost verbatim, Ashbys captions for I, II and IV, while omitting III.