Luqa cemetery expansion finds Bronze Age remains [ Malta ]

Malta Independent ^ | Saturday, August 30, 2008 | Francesca Vella

[SunkenCiv]

A cluster of five silos dating back to the Bronze Age period were recently discovered when excavation work, forming part of a project to extend the Luqa cemetery, was being carried out...

various cisterns and silo pits had previously been discovered in the area known as Tal-Mejtin...

Themistocles (Temi) Zammit -- who discovered, among others, the Hypogeum, Tarxien Temples, Hagar Qim, Mnajdra, and St Paul's Catacombs -- had unearthed a number of silos in the same area, while British archaeologist David Trump had also discovered another cluster of pits in the 1960s...

The Bronze Age culture replaced the Temple culture, which ended mysteriously in Malta some time around 2,500 BC. Among the discoveries dating back to this period, which lasted till about 700 BC, are the cart ruts and the dolmens scattered around the Maltese Islands...

Metal was introduced to the islands as were different burial rituals. While the temple builders had practised inhumation, that is burial of a body in a grave, the Bronze Age inhabitants practised cremation, incineration of the body. The first phase of the Bronze Age is represented by a cremation cemetery at Tarxien, while the second phase (circa 1500-700 BC) takes its name from a Bronze Age village at Borg in-Nadur in Birzebbuga, which was fortified by a massive wall on one side...

These people left pottery and clay idols, some of which are highly stylised with affinities to Mycenaean idols and Anatolian and Cycladic types...

the Bahrija Phase was an intrusive cultural group (circa 900-700 BC). It represented the third and final phase, whose pottery suggests an origin or a strong cultural attachment from the Iron Age of southern Italy, Apulia or Calabria.

[SunkenCiv]

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[colorado tanker]

According to Anthony Bonanno’s The Archaeology of Gozo: from Prehistoric to Arab Times, the Bahrija Phase was an intrusive cultural group (circa 900-700 BC). It represented the third and final phase, whose pottery suggests an origin or a strong cultural attachment from the Iron Age of southern Italy, Apulia or Calabria.

Interesting. I've seen very little about Southern Italians before the foundation of Rome.