A view from the countryside : the nature of the late Punic and early Roman activity at the Żejtun Villa site, Malta

Abstract

A legacy of antiquarian and archaeological explorations in the Maltese archipelago has long been identified with the rock-cut tombs and associated funerary remains of the Phoenician and Punic periods. By contrast, little is known about the islands’ countryside in antiquity. Recent excavations at the site of a long-lived Roman villa complex in Żejtun (Malta) have begun to throw light on the rural world of the archipelago, unravelling the nature of the transition between the Punic and Roman periods where continuity rather than rupture implied by the phases of culture history is becoming clearer.