Prof. Anthony Bonanno revisits a comprehensive study on the phenomenon
Very few people have not yet come across these sets of two parallel ruts, like railways, cut into the hard rock surface in the Maltese bare rocky landscape. Even fewer people can really say they have not heard about them and how they are still a closed mystery. Some of these ‘ruts’, mostly in single pairs of various depth, are so shallow they are almost imperceptible; but others occur in complex clusters like those of Misraħ Għar il-Kbir and Tarġa Gap.
Back to Malta’s prehistory
Historians and archaeologists, geographers and scientists - all have been intrigued by the elusiveness of their interpretation. The predominant view is that the cart ruts were created sometime during Malta’s prehistory (5200-750 BC), mainly because it was embraced and promulgated by highly respected personalities in Maltese archaeology like Temi Zammit. The apparent difficult navigability of some sets of ruts made some scholars suggest that the vehicles they were intended for were some sort of slide cars to carry loads from one place to the other. From the statistical point of view, however, by far the greater majority of them are physically associated with ancient quarries, that is, quarries dating from Punic and Roman times (c. 750 BC-c. AD 500).
A comprehensive study on the phenomenon
The book The Significance of Cart-ruts in Ancient Landscapes was researched and written, under my academic direction, by my former Archaeology students Joseph Magro Conti (now the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage) and Paul C. Saliba (since then deeply involved in the Restoration Directorate). Although published in 2008, it remains the most comprehensive study of the cart ruts phenomenon published so far, both locally and globally. In this book, the authors published an inventory of the Maltese cart ruts most of which had already been inventoried for protection by the Planning Authority. They also discussed all the then known examples of similar cart ruts throughout the world, and of various ages, including one datable to the 19th century. Because of this, in their conclusion they left the overall interpretation of this cultural feature open.
But they also highlighted one important example of Maltese cart ruts, at Ta’ Dun Konz (l/o Rabat) which provides incontestable evidence that at least some cart ruts belonged to the Classical age or later, because they are engraved on the bed of a Classical age quarry.
Ongoing research in the field
I was gradually won over to the idea of the association of the Maltese cart ruts with quarries already during the early years of my academic career when I used to spend my Sunday afternoons in search of Classical archaeological remains in the Maltese countryside. At that time and since then, I documented many quarries that, judging from the size of undetached blocks, must have been in use in Punic and Roman times. In addition, on the majority of occasions they were in close proximity to cart ruts which often ended inside them. Besides, this association with quarrying has been recorded elsewhere, especially around the Mediterranean littoral, from Libya to Switzerland, from Sardinia to Greece.
My research in this field is still ongoing and my intention is to apply new technologies to reach more convincing solutions to this enigma.