David Trump honoured

While immensely gratified by my investiture as an Officer of the National Order of Merit, which the authorities have seen fit to bestow upon me, I feel I must make acknowledgement to at least some of the many without whom I could never have been considered for this honour.

First of all should undoubtedly be my wife Bridget, a loyal helpmate throughout - not only with the archaeology, of course.

My recent writings, in particular Malta: Prehistory and Temples and my three chapters in Malta before History, owe at least as much to the skills in photography and layout of Daniel Cilia as they do to my text.

Although nominally the senior project director of the Xaghra Circle excavation, 1987-94, the title was purely honorific. On site I was merely another digger, though with special responsibility for the pottery finds. All the hard work of organising and directing was in the capable hands of Simon Stoddart and Caroline Malone. Publication of the results is, I am glad to report, imminent.

Looking further back, the excavation at Skorba, 1961-3, would never have taken place, let alone achieved the successful results it did, without the encouragement and backing of the then director of the Musuem Department, Captain Charles Zammit.

I owe a double debt to Professor John Evans. At the personal level, it was he who, 50 years ago this year, first introduced me to the delights of Maltese prehistory. Of far wider significance, his pioneer ordering of its phases laid the necessary foundation for all subsequent research. Behind him yet again stood the towering figure of Sir Temi Zammit, whose brilliant work at Hal Saflieni in 1910 and Tarxien, 1915-17, made him the unchallenged "father of Maltese archaeology".

Finally, we should all, not least myself, acknowledge that we would have had very little to study but for the truly extraordinary legacy in architecture, sculpture and ceramics left to us by the ancient Maltese, to delight, intrigue, baffle even, their distant successors in these islands, ourselves.