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Skorba, Malta and the Mediterranean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

David Trump
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Abstract

Professor Bernabò Brea, in his review of Professor J. D. Evans's Malta (ANTIQUITY, 1960, 132), did not dispute the sequence of cultures there described, but he questioned the interpretation of this sequence in three important particulars, namely, the continuity between the first (Għar Dalam) and later phases of Evans's sequence, the absolute chronology of the Neolithic period, and thirdly the role which Malta played in the prehistory of the Central and West Mediterranean. These three criticisms were met by Evans (ANTIQUITY, 1960, 218) and now Dr D. H. Trump, Curator of Archaeology in the Malta Museum, discusses all these problems in relation to his recent excavations at Skorba.

Type
Articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 35 , Issue 140 , December 1961 , pp. 300 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1961

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References

1 A C14 date of 2690 ± 150 B.C. from Mgarr was published in ANTIQUITY, 1061. The reasons for applying it to the Zebbug rather than to the Mgarr phase are given below.

2 A preliminary report appeared in the Illustrated London News, 12 August, 1961.

3 A similar explanation was found for the anomaly at Tarxien (Malta, 122), a phase D temple demolished and rebuilt on the same plan in phase E. In 1960 a Tarxien period floor was found underlying the imported fill containing the earlier, Ggantija, sherds.

4 This was found to have happened at Skorba and Santa Verna also. The tested carbon samples were collected in this floor, where no sherds later than Zebbug were found.

5 Museum Annual Report, 1926-27, p. I, and Sir Temi Zammit’s original notebook.

6 The subdivision of Tarxien was already suggested by Evans, Saflieni being its earlier part.

7 Proc. Prehist. Soc., 1961, forthcoming.

8 The autumn campaign has found a level with unmixed late red-slipped Skorba ware stratified below Zebbug, (cf. Brea at the Grotta Chiusazza, Sicily, 73), showing it to be at least in part anterior to the latter and a phase separate from both it and the grey Skorba. We have found not merely the earlier phase Brea asked for, but two. He must now find in Sicily a proto-Diana ware similar to our grey Skorba.

9 These, at Zebbug, Buqana and Buzbezija, were found as simple pits. The first certain rock-cut chamber tombs are at Xemxija, with Mgarr sherds their earliest contents.

10 Mr Warwick Bray, working in Sardinia, has some evidence for connexions in either direction between Ozieri and Tarxien. Otherwise Malta’s isolation seems virtually complete.