Monographs

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Mortuary Customs in Prehistoric Malta: Excavations at the Brochtorff Circle at Xaghra, Gozo (1987-94)

edited by Caroline Malone, Simon Stoddart, Anthony Bonnano and David Trump, with Tancred Gouder and Anthony Pace.

“The Brochtorff Circle is an outstandingly important site and this publication will make a major and long-lasting contribution to understandings of Mediterranean prehistory”
Professor Ruth Whitehouse
Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University College London

Amongst the earliest stone architecture in the world, the Neolithic temples and hypogea of Malta testify to a sophisticated island culture. Explored in the early twentieth century, the subterranean burial temple, the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum, was cleared of its burials and artefacts without detailed record. Late in the twentieth century, excavation at Xaghra on Gozo rediscovered a second cave cemetery that provides a unique comparison through the investigation of a substantial portion of the buried site using modern scientific techniques. This revealed one of the largest prehistoric burial assemblages of human remains yet discovered in the Mediterranean, amounting to some 220,000 bones, together with a rich assemblage of animal bone, figurative sculpture, symbolic artefacts and architectural remains.

The detailed factual and interpretative report on this site, supported by fresh scientific data on raw materials, landsnails and environment, isotopes, radiometric dating and statistical analysis, is placed in the broader framework of the domestic and ritual landscape of the Maltese islands. The result is one of the most comprehensive studies of the incipient complexity of this mature, agricultural, but non-urban, island society so far published. 424p, 300 illus. (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 2009)

Hardback | £95 & US$170 | ISBN 978-1-902937-49-6 | 424 pp. | 300 ills. | Price GB £95.00 publication date November 2009
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News item
Malta book launches at the Ministry for Gozo