A socio-economic approach to Maltese prehistory : the temple builders

Abstract

After his excavations at Skorba from 1962 to 1964 D. H. Trump separated the sequence of Maltese prehistory in three major divisions, called 'periods', each of which was subdivided into 'phases' named after their most representative Maltese sites. This chronological sequence, equipped with a set of approximate dates calculated from a series of carbon - 14 samples produced by the Skorba excavation, came to substitute in a most definitive way the classification formed of a combination of letter:s and Roman numbers proposed by ]. D. Evans in 1953. The latter distinguished only two broad divisions, Period I and Period II, which in turn corresponded to Temi Zammit's Neolithic and Bronze Age. It is generally agreed that there is a marked break in the continuity of cultural development between the Red Skorba phase and the following Zebbug phase, and this led Trump to distinguish the first period (Neolithic) from the second one (Copper Age). However, this separation is not accepted unreservedly by alI, and several are those who are reluctant to accept Trump's introduction of a 'Copper Age' which in itself implies a distinctive technological innovation that might not have happened at that particular point in time. It is for this reason that, although the subject of this paper is the Temple Period, it has been felt necessary to incorporate with it a treatment, albeit separately, of the earlier period. On the other hand, Trump's subdivision according to type-sites has withstood the trial of time and is followed here. The cited dates are radiocarbon dates calculated by Trump and calibrated by Renfrew.