Simon Stoddart

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.

The Tiber valley project: the Tiber and Rome through two millennia

In 1997 a new collaborative research project was initiated by the British School at Rome. This project draws on a variety of sources of archaeological information to explore the regional impact of the City of Rome throughout the period from 1000 BC to AD 1300. The project provides a common collaborative research framework which brings together a range of archaeologists and historians working in various institutions. In this paper those involved in different aspects of this new project outline their work and its overall objectives.

Territory, time, and state : the archaeological development of the Gubbio basin

Part I. 1. Introduction Caroline Malone, James McVicar, and Simon Stoddart: Part II. The Environmental Setting 2. Geology and geomorphology Mauro Coltorti 3. Pedology Mirjam Schomeaker, Eric Van Waveren, Peter Finke, Rene Sewuster, and Jan Servink 4. Vegetation and climate Franscesco Allegrucci, Edoardo Biondi, Rachel Fulton, Christopher Hunt, Simon Stoddary, and Rupert Housley Part III. The First Human Occupation and Transition to Agriculture: 5. The evidence of lithics Tim Reynolds 6. The transition to agriculture Caroline Malone, and Jenny Harding Part IV. The Dissection of a Bronze and Early Iron Age Landscape: 7. Site setting Jenny Harding, Peter Finke, and Rene Sewuster 8. Agriculture James McVicar, Catherine Backway, Gillian Clark, and Rupert Housley 9. Site relationships Caroline Malone, and Simon Stoddart 10. The regional setting Caroline Malone, and Simon Stoddart Part V. Ritual Process and the Iron Age State: 11. Ritual sites and the city Simon Stoddart, and James Whitley 12. Literacy and linguistic evidence John Wilkins 13. Text and context the regional setting Simon Stoddart, and James Whitley Part VI. Imperial Incorporation: The Advent of Rome: 14. The City Dorica Maconi, and Nicholas Whitehead 15. The territory Nicholas Whitehead Part VII. The Medieval Period Francesco Allegrucci Part VIII. The Long Term Trajectory of the Itermontane Polity: 16. Colonisation, formation and incorporation Caroline Malone, and Simon Stoddart.

Opening the frontier:The Gubbio-Perugia frontier in the course of history

The frontier between Gubbio (ancient Umbria) and Perugia (ancient Etruria), in the northeast part of the modern region of Umbria, was founded in the late sixth century bc. The frontier endured in different forms, most notably in the late antique and medieval periods, as well as fleetingly in 1944, and is fossilized today in the local government boundaries. Archaeological, documentary and philological evidence are brought together to investigate different scales of time that vary from millennia to single days in the representation of a frontier that captured a watershed of geological origins. The foundation of the frontier appears to have been a product of the active agency of the Etruscans, who projected new settlements across the Tiber in the course of the sixth century bc, protected at the outer limit of their territory by the naturally defended farmstead of Col di Marzo. The immediate environs of the ancient abbey of Montelabate have been studied intensively by targeted, systematic and geophysical survey in conjunction with excavation, work that is still in progress. An overview of the development of the frontier is presented here, employing the data currently available.

Environment, soils and early agriculture in Apennine Central Italy

Abstract Many studies of early agriculture and soils in Europe and in Italy, in particular, concentrated on the prime soils; relatively little attention has been given to more marginal zones. Broad comparisons have often been made between modern soils and the distributions of sites and little attention has been paid to indicators of pedological change, such as snails and pollen. Recent archaeological and environmental research in the valley of Gubbio (Umbria, Italy), at the Neolithic site of San Marco, has provided a new and important range of environmental and economic data which allows alternative interpretations than those based directly on modern pedological data.

Celebrations in prehistoric Malta

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the tempo of celebration in prehistoric Malta through the deployment of new fieldwork data and comparison with ethnographic study of modern celebrations on the same island. The article commemorates the late Jeremy Boissevain and his stimulation of new ways of thinking about prehistory, assesses and updates the 1990 article in World Archaeology by two of the current authors, and deploys new computerized modelling of celestial alignments, in the context of new chronologies and sequential data of celebratory locales. The paper shows how contrasts between the tempo of celebration in modern times and prehistory emerge by comparing ethnographic and archaeological evidence.

Island risks and the resilience of a prehistoric civilization

ABSTRACT Resilience in the face of uncertainty is a universal issue, but of particular concern for small islands where climate change and accelerated sea-level change are current worries. This paper investigates the issues of resilience and uncertainty in the case of prehistoric Malta, which at face value presented a natural environment fraught with many risks. The authors survey these dangers, especially the potential damage to food crops caused by soil erosion, to which the islands of Malta are particularly exposed. The prehistoric inhabitants of the islands nonetheless coped with uncertainty with enormous success as recent new excavations and radiocarbon dating have revealed that the elaborate periods of monument maintenance, for which the Maltese Islands are widely famed, has a duration of some 1200 years.

Challenging text in early ItalyVedia Izzet. The archaeology of Etruscan society: identity, surface and material culture in Archaic Etruria. xii+320 pages, 42 illustrations. 2007. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 978-0-521-85877-9 hardback £55 &

than as exemplars of a universalising mathematical tendency. Her work is informed both by the ethnomathematical work of cultural anthropologists such as Urton (1997) and Ascher (1991), and by Said’s (1978) critique of ethnocentric scholarship on the Middle East. The most striking chapter of the entire book is the Epilogue, an extended historiography of ‘Mesopotamian’ mathematics in which Robson pays tribute to her predecessors such as Neugebauer (1957) while at the same time utterly rejecting the Western-centred and Greek-oriented translations and interpretations of cuneiform texts.

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* Redhouse, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, England. d.i.redhouse@arch.cam.ac.uk Anderson, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge CB2 1RH, England. maa35@hermes.cam.ac.uk Cockerell, Committee for Aerial Photography, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF, England. tfc1000@cam.ac.uk Gilmour, Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, 16 Bernard Terrace, Edinburgh EH8 9NX, Scotland. Simongi@rcahms.gov.uk Housley, Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland. R.Housley@archaeology.arts.gla.ac.uk Malone, Department of Prehistory & Early Europe, British Museum, London WC1B 3DG, England. cmalone@british-museum.ac.uk Stoddart, Magdalene College, Cambridge CB3 0AG, England. ss16@cam.ac.uk