The Tarxien phase levels : spatial and stratigraphic analysis and reconstruction

Abstract

Only three stones remain visible today from within the Circle, one incorporated into the old farmhouse wall and two in the rubble wall of the field to the north. More are visible from outside of the Circle to the north, especially after clearance of undergrowth in 2007 (Fig. 8.77), and there may be more within the present rubble structure. Hoiiel, in fact, provides the only early plan of the site, which can be compared in turn with the actual field boundary and the surviving megaliths (Figs. 1.2, 1.4, 8.1). According to the nineteenth-century watercolours by de Brocktorff, the two entrance upright stones were 14-16 £thigh (see Figs. 1.3, 1.5 and 1.6 for an artistic record). Excavation has not yet managed to demonstrate the exact position of this entrance. However, it seems to align with the Ggantija temple, and the Circle would appear to be part of a prehistoric processional landscape (Stoddart et al. 1993) (see Chapter 4). The similarities between the Ggantija and the recorded long-and-short stones of the Circle wall are such that they may be contemporary, but there is no stratigraphic or other proof of this at the time of writing. Excavation in the northern area of the site at the foot of surviving megaliths (admittedly set directly on bedrock) found no datable deposit, but it is inferred that the Circle dates to the Tarxien phase, contemporary with other aspects of the well-demonstrated monumentalization of the site.