The orientations of prehistoric temples in Malta and Gozo

Abstract

I'he prehistoric temples of Malta and Gozo are amnong the oldest freestanding architectural objects in the world. A description and an assembly of plans are found in J. D. Eans (1971). Some of the temples face in similar directions. and it has been suggested that these clusters of bearing could be explained by orientations upon astronomical targets (Agius and Ventura 1981 ; Serio et al. 1992; Ventura et al 1993). It has also been suggested that the temples might have been orientated on terrestrial targets (Stoddart el al 1993) . The present essay reexamines the orientations that might have been made. It is supposed that Malta and Gozo were inhabited by Neolithic peoples who reached the islands fronm Sicily across the 90-km-wide Sicilian Channel. Present-day conditions in the channel are described by James Clarke (1989) and by Rod Heikeh(1998). The "temple period" of freestanding constructions begins in the fourth millennium B.C. and ends in the third. A convenient chronology divides temple building into two phases: a "Ggantija phase" (3500-3000 B.C.) and a "Tarxien phase" (3000-2500 B.C.). The earliest temples are three-chambered (like a clover leaf) or five-chambered in plan, and later examples are multichambered with one temple joined to another. The fittings to the temples. statues, bowls, figurines, and the evidence of screens and barriers have been interpreted to show an increasingly esoteric and perhaps theatrical practice.