Temple landscapes: Fragility, change and resilience of Holocene environments in the Maltese Islands Collection home page Statistics
The project employed a programme of high-resolution chronological and stratigraphic investigations of the valley systems on Malta and Gozo. Buried deposits extracted through coring and geoarchaeological study yielded rich and chronologically controlled data that allow an important new understanding of environmental change in the islands. The study combined AMS radiocarbon and OSL chronologies with detailed palynological, molluscan and geoarchaeological analyses. These enable environmental reconstruction of prehistoric landscapes and the changing resources exploited by the islanders between the seventh and second millennia bc. The interdisciplinary studies combined with excavated economic and environmental materials from archaeological sites allows Temple landscapes to examine the dramatic and damaging impacts made by the first farming communities on the islands’ soil and resources. The project reveals the remarkable resilience of the soil-vegetational system of the island landscapes, as well as the adaptations made by Neolithic communities to harness their productivity, in the face of climatic change and inexorable soil erosion. Neolithic people evidently understood how to maintain soil fertility and cope with the inherently unstable changing landscapes of Malta. In contrast, second millennium bc Bronze Age societies failed to adapt effectively to the long-term aridifying trend so clearly highlighted in the soil and vegetation record. This failure led to severe and irreversible erosion and very different and short-lived socio-economic systems across the Maltese islands.
By Charles French, Chris O. Hunt, Reuben Grima, Rowan McLaughlin, Simon Stoddart & Caroline Malone
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
ISBN: 978-1-902937-99-1
Browse
Collection's Items (Sorted by Submit Date in Descending order): 1 to 20 of 26
Collection's Items (Sorted by Submit Date in Descending order): 1 to 20 of 26