Margined people of the karstland : pastoral cave-centred survival strategies in the Central Mediterranean

Abstract

Archaeological evidence has established the view that cave complexes, scattered in the Central Mediterranean island landscape, have been used for human occupation, either incessantly or intermittently, from prehistory down to the late Middle Ages. More recent comparative fieldwork surveying and the re- discovery and interpretation of significant written sources, have assisted in the emergence of a fiesh outlook on the use of cave complexes in the pre-modern era. Numerous references to entire cave-dwelling communities on the Sicilian terrain, the Maltese and Pelagic islands and North Africa, abound in the contemporary texts of classical Arab geographers and chroniclers. In most of these works, cave- complexes, usually referred to in Arabic as Al Girart, were identified as landmark settlements. Hisn al Giran (fortress of the grottoes) which held a large community in forty large caverns, Gardutah (probably at Rocalmuto) and the Giran ad Daqiq (the grottoes of flour) with their vigorous markets, were distinguished zones in the Sicilian landscape. Similarly, natural or semi- artificially hewed sets of caverns as Char il-Kbir, il-Latnija, Gebel Pietru and San Niklaw, were principal cave-founded settlements in Malta and Gozo during the Middle Ages. Further research is confirming that from the late Middle Ages the gradual expansion of the urban centres, accompanied by the enclosure of extensive tracts of common land, mainly of public grazing gmunds, gradually eliminated many of the ancient cave dwelling communities. The remaining household groupings were later to be found dispersed on the extents of uncultivated garigue wasteland. Yet, the social dimension of these scattered cave- centred people during the modern era has not been studied. In this context, the present paper seeks to assist in the understanding of these communities' ways of life by incorporating their social and economic formations in what can be called 'pockets of terrain' that have been exploited in a multi- variety of ways. It is important to keep in mind that the cave centred households under focus survived during the modern era through-out the 19th and 20th centuries, on the remaining extents of common lands, leading a pastoral way of life.