Malta : an island of prehistoric sacred places viewed as site significant spatial systems

Abstract

Before familiar Stonehenge, Avebury and Carnac, and 5000 years before the Anasazi of Mesa Verde moved from pit houses to above-ground pueblos (Stuart, 1988, 101), the magnificent megalithic temples of Malta, "the earliest free-standing monuments of stone in the world" (Renfrew, 1973, 161) were erected by a relatively small group of committed creative prehistoric people (Renfrew, 1973i 17). The introduction of a scientific dating method, radio carbon dating, into the archaeological field of research 'followed by the recent correction of the time scale through bristlecone pine calibration, has shown that the megalithic monuments of Europe are older that the Pyramids of Egypt and Professor Colin Renfrew of Cambridge University states that they are indeed "the earliest buildings still standing today" (Renfrew, 1983,6); the dates of "the impressive temples of Malta are now set before their Near Eastern counterparts in stone, well before the Mycenaean Civilization of Greece even began" (Renfrew 1973, 16).