Tarxien and Tarxien cemetery : break or continuity between Temple Period and Bronze Age in Malta?

Abstract

This question is discussed in the light of new approaches to prehistoric studies and making use of the latest available data. A clear-cut separation between the two periods had been proposed by Themistocles Zammit as soon as he investigated the site of the Tarxien Temples in 1915-17. There he identified a sterile layer which, in his view, clearly separated the stratum representing the Temple Culture (Neolithic) from the following one. that representing the re-use of the same megalithic structures as a cremation cemetery by a Bronze Age people carrying a totally different culture. The latter were technologically more advanced - they carried bronze tools and weapons - but artistically less endowed than their predecessors. The possibility of some sort of continuity. despite the apparent complete break in material culture and in the religious ideology, has been suspected and expressed on several occasions by John Evans since the 1950s. The evidence of the possibility of such continuity comes from imported objects which seem to overlap the two strata, as well as from direct contacts with overlapping contemporary cultures in Sicily. New data from current excavations on the island of Gozo, which still need to be properly processed, are taken into consideration. Weighing all the evidence one does not find as yet sufficient reason to change the conclusion reached by Zammit in 1930, namely, that the Temple people were in fact replaced by a new people around 2000 B.c.