Site, artefacts and landscape : prehistoric Borg in-Nadur, Malta

Abstract

For well over a century the study of Maltese prehistory has been dominated by the extraordinary megalithic buildings that are found on the two major islands of the archipelago. Defined as the ‘world’s oldest free-standing stone structures’ and inscribed on UNESCO’s world heritage list for their outstanding universal architectural value, these buildings, often called ‘temples’, have attracted attention, aroused curiosity and sparked debate. Indeed, it is common opinion that for almost a millennium, starting about 3600 BC, the Maltese islands set themselves apart from what was happening elsewhere in the Mediterranean. In the view of many, difference was expressed by these Late Neolithic ‘temples’ – a term for which semantic breadth is preferred in order to accommodate different opinions, encourage diverging ideas and even allow unorthodox expressions. By contrast, interest in the period successive to the Temple period, when the Maltese archipelago enters the fold of events in the south-central Mediterranean, has been largely absent. This collection of essays is an attempt at filling some gaps in the islands’ history during the long second millennium BC by taking a cluster of archaeological sites around the area of Borġ in-Nadur in south-east Malta as the central point of description, discussion, and review.