https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/41300 2026-04-26T06:14:39Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/46940 Title: Trunkless legs of stone : debating ritual continuity at tas-Silġ, Malta Authors: Vella, Nicholas C. Abstract: Like the traveller from an antique land in Percy Shelley's sonnet 'Ozymandias', it is a pair of trunkless legs of stone that caught the attention of the present writer and inspired the title of this paper. The damaged statue I have in mind was discovered by Italian archaeologists at the site of Tas-Silġ in 1964 and is at present exhibited at the National Museum of Archaeology in Malta (Ciasca 1965: 57; Mallia 1965: 75-76) [Figures 1 & 2]. It represents a figure sculpted in high relief from a rectangular block of soft globigerina limestone, measuring 1.14 m. high, 0.49 m. wide, and 0.47 m. deep [Figures 3 & 4, plate 1a]. The figure wears a skirt and stands on short and swollen calves above a low plinth decorated with running spirals on a pitted background with a border round the top. The feet are partly damaged but the toes of the right foot are visible. Above the waist the damage increases in extent and in depth and most of the thorax is missing; enough of the arms survive, however, to show that they were held across the waist below two folds of the abdomen. Francis Mallia, then curator of the National Museum, was responsible for the publication of the statue: he dated the sculpture to the Tarxien phase, now known to have ended about 2600 cal BC, and maintained that the scars on the surface were 'made by the blade of a farmer's plough in going over the relic year after year and hitting its most prominent parts' (Mallia 1965: 75). Description: An Index follows this Chapter. 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/46939 Title: The Gozo stone circle re-discovered Authors: Attard Tabone, Joseph Abstract: Every summer between 1987 and 1994 excavations were carried out on an archaeological site on the outskirts of Xaghra in Gozo, about half way between the important prehistoric remains at Santa Verna and the Ggantija Temples. The project involved the Universities of Malta, Cambridge and later Bristol, in conjunction with the Malta Museum of Archaeology. This site has long been known as the Gozo Stone Circle. It was given the name Brocktorff Circle in 1972 by Dr. David Trump, a former Curator of Archaeology in Malta, in commemoration of Charles Frederick Brocktorff, the German artist who painted the Circle in the 1820s .. Earlier in archaeological and historical literature, it has been referred to variously as Un Edifice Antique de Forme Circulaire, A Circle of Cyclopean Walls or simply as the Gozo Stone Circle. But the earliest reference to this site is found in an old manuscript in Italian, in which it is described as Un Recinto in Forma di Torneo, i.e. a circular enclosure (M.C.A. Mise. 55: 144). 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/46938 Title: The subterranean sanctuary at Ħal Saflieni Authors: Mifsud, Anton; Mifsud, Simon Abstract: The Hypogeum at Hal Saflieni is a unique structure on planet Earth; it is the only known megalithic monument which has been carved underground, and no parallels can be drawn with similar structures elsewhere. It not merely testifies to the precocious civilization of the Neolithic Maltese, but is a surviving model of the several Maltese megalithic structures above ground. Unlike the open stone circles outside the Maltese islands, such as Stonehenge, the Maltese megalithic repertoire is characterized by a massive enclosure housing a sanctuary; unlike the megalithic tombs enclosed and buried in supporting soil, the Maltese structures are entirely self-supporting and stand freely, without the surrounding matrix required elsewhere. They are therefore rightly classed as the earliest temples on the planet. 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/46937 Title: Megalithic mandalas of the Middle Sea - the neolithic builders of Malta and their builders Authors: England, Richard Abstract: When Picasso visited the caves of Lascaux and viewed the remarkable works of the Paleolithic artists of Western Europe, he is said to have remarked "we have invented nothing!" Any latter day modern architect visiting the megalithic temple sites of the Maltese Islands would have to arrive at a similar conclusion. For too many years, modern man has refused to credit our ancient ancestors with intellectual qualities and artistic properties over and above the accepted magical and sacred ones, which as evidence demonstrates, these people amply possessed. Too much time has perhaps been spent by archaeologists sampling and studying miniature particles and remnants and not applying enough attention to the sophisticated architectural spatial concepts of the buildings themselves and also to their specific site locations together with the complex engineering techniques utilized in these unique ritual centres of the Neolithic period. 1999-01-01T00:00:00Z