From Cabiri to goddesses : cult, ritual and context in the formative years of Maltese archaeology

Abstract

1985 is a date certainly familiar to most of us who have gathered in Cambridge to discuss interdisciplinary approaches to the study of cult and ritual. Colin Renfrew's archaeological report of the Phylakopi sanctuary on the island of Melos was published, proposing a methodology for the recognition of the archaeological manifestations of religious ritual (Renfrew 1985). Also in that year, a gathering of scholars was convened on Malta to discuss the theme of Archaeology and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean (Bonanno 1986). This paper is geared towards a consideration of the spatial context of three-dimensional anthropomorphic representations from Late Neolithic Malta. It is inspired by work in progress related to the study of unpublished works on Maltese prehistory by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Ugolini (1895-1936). In 2000 the archive was traced in the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico 'L. Pigorini' in Rome (Pessina and Vella 2005). Ugolini's work, undertaken in the early 1930s, had consisted of a thorough description of the megalithic monuments and of all the objects that had been excavated over the previous century and which could be located in the showcases and stores of the Valletta museum. A study of these papers shows that Ugolini intended to study the objects in the context of spatial distribution and other artefactual associations.