Life and death in rural Malta : first results of the joint Belgo-Maltese survey project (2008-2009)

Abstract

This paper presents the initial results of the Malta Survey Project. It sets out the aims of the research, the design of the fieldwork, and the provisional results obtained during the first two campaigns (2008-2009). The Malta Survey Project (henceforth, MSP) is a trilateral endeavour of the Department of Archaeology of Ghent University (Belgium) and the University of Malta and the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage (Malta). The scope of the MSP is very clear: it is an intensive, systematic field-walking survey in a kilometre-wide transect in the north of Malta, beyond the main Phoenician and Punic urban centre on the island, the present-day Rabat/Mdina (Fig. 1). The insular landscape is investigated diachronically, even though the MSP’s principal interest lies in the Phoenician and Punic periods, that is to say from the late 8th century BCE until the period of the Roman occupation of the island, which started in 218 BCE. The particularity of the Maltese situation, as compared to other Phoenician/Punic landscapes in the central and western Mediterranean, is the fact that the main urban centre is not situated on the coast, but is located in the island’s interior (cf. van Dommelen and Gómez Bellard 2010). This may have had an effect upon the way the rural landscape was conceived, managed and exploited. [Excerpt]