A study of the traditional and modern day breeding and slaughtering of sheep, goats and cattle in Malta

Abstract

When the first inhabitants of Malta decided to migrate to these islands they brought with them a farming economy to which they had been used to in their mother-land (i.e. Sicily) and the rudimentary tools and equipment needed to make a fresh start on traditional lines in a new environment. Domesticated animals were certainly not present and the finer specimens of the ovicaprids, cattle and pigs. whose bones were found in (Għar Dalam and other levels at Skorba and at Għar Dalam itself. had to be shipped over from Sicily for breeding new flocks and livestock. Cattle herding is substantiated both by bone remains, recovered from Xemxija and Skora and by two large relief bull carvings on two upright blocks in a rather obscure room inside the middle temple al Tarxien [...]