Human-induced changes in the environment and landscape of the Maltese Islands from the Neolithic to the 15th century AD as inferred from a scientific study of sediments from Marsa, Malta

Abstract

The Maltese Islands occupy with a total surface of 316 km2 a central place in the Mediterranean Sea at latitude 35°48' - 36°05' North and longitude 14°11' - 14°35' East of the equator (Vossmerbaumer, 1972: 4). The largest island is Malta (246 km2), followed by Gozo (67 km2) and Comino and several smaller, uninhabited islets (Azzopardi, 1995: 19-21). Located ea. 80 km south of Sicily and 290 km east of Tunisia, the Libyan coast is 355 km to the south, and the nearest form of land to the west is the island of Crete, at a distance of 855 km (see Figure 1.1, Trump, 2002: 15). The environment of the Maltese Islands is generally thought to have been extensively forested prior to the arrival of the first settlers in the Neolithic. Hunt's 1996 palynological investigations of Quaternary deposits at Fiddien Valley in Malta shows a scrabby vegetation of Cory/us, Pinus, Alnus, Ostrya, Filicales and Cyperace, with other broad-leaved tree and shrub species, but also patches with open-ground taxa during the Pleistocene interstadials. The Fiddien tufa deposit unfortunately lacks an absolute date, and could be of any age from Late Pliocene to Early Holocene (Hunt, 1997: 102-3), although it is most likely that the deposition took place during a mid to late Pleistocene interglacial phase (Pedley et al., 2002: 96). The introduction of agriculture by these first settlers is believed to have been accompanied by intensive tree felling through slash-and-burn to gain precious agricultural land for crops (Grech, 2001: 48). Timber was probably also used as a central column at Skorba in the construction of early Ghar Dalam mudbrick huts (Trump, 1966: 10) while the wood of Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree\ Crataegus sp. (Hawthorn) and Fraxinus sp. (Ash) was used for domestic fires (Metcalfe, 1966: 54). Human-induced fires, aimed to remove the spiny and distasteful undershrubs and to promote the growth of edible plants and young shrubs for sheep and goat (Grove & Rackham, 2001: 229) may also have been employed. The effect of browsing in prehistoric Malta still needs to be established, as this depends on the size of the herds and whether they were controlled or allowed to browse indiscriminately. Though sheep and goats seem to do little damage to fully grown trees once the trees have grown out of reach, young and edible trees fall victim and tree regeneration is inhibited (ibid). Often, writers on the Temple Period connect the sudden collapse of the Temple Culture with a severe degradation of the environment due to over-exploitation of the resources and subsequent soil erosion (for example Evans, 1959: 39; Trump, 1966: 51; Grech, 2001: 84), possibly compounded by a succession of dry rainless years (Bonanno, 1986b: 40). Pollen analyses from a Bronze Age cistern at Tal-Mejtin in Luqa by Godwin (1961: 8) led to the conclusion that the Bronze Age environment then was 'already' very much like it is today: grass and low herbs, Mediterranean scrubs and very few trees (Trump, 2000: 99-100). A more recent analysis of molluscan remains from a Zebbug Phase tomb at the Xaghra Stone Circle revealed also an open country/steppe vegetation in this earliest phase of the Temple Period. (Malone et al., 1995; Schembri & Hunt, forthcoming). The result begs the question, whether the often mentioned tree cover could have fallen victim already in the Ghar Dalam Phase, the earliest period of the settlers. It emphasizes that the magnitude of the anthropogenic influence on the Maltese environment needs to be assessed with newly obtained data. These data would allow the reconstruction of the environment prior to the arrival of the first settlers and then to establish any changes it experienced, whether anthropogenic or through natural forces, or a combination of the two. [...]