Open day at Tas-Silg dig

The university's department of classics and archaeology is to hold an open morning in the area known as tas-Silg, in the limits of Marsaxlokk, on Tuesday between 8.30 and 11.30 a.m.

The department has been carrying out excavations on the site for a month every summer since 1996. The dig is directed by Prof. Anthony Bonanno.

Visitors on Tuesday will be able to see the work being carried out by local archaeology students and foreign students taking part in an archaeology summer school organised by the Foundation for International Studies. The school includes the participation of students from the US and the UK.

Although the dig is compulsory for first year archaeology students, most usually find the experience so fulfilling that they also take part in subsequent years until they finish their course.

The aim of the dig is to try and understand the formation of the area. The experience includes digging, trowelling, planning and drawing. In the afternoons, participants process the material they dig in the mornings, wash the pottery and number the sherds.

What can be restored is taken to the Restoration Centre in Bighi.

Dr Nicholas Vella, of the Department of Classics and Archaeology, and Simon Mason, archaeological officer with Kent County Council (UK) are responsible for field supervision.

Dr Vella said there was originally a prehistoric temple on the site, but Phoenician, Punic and Roman temples and even a Paleo Christian basilica were subsequently built.

In an article which he co-authored with Prof. Anthony Frendo, Dr Vella wrote: "The choice of site for their temple, amidst remains of an earlier period, would seem to be a conscious move on the part of the Phoenician newcomers to justify through ritual action their possession of new territory...

"Some of the pilgrims who visited the sanctuary appear to have been sea-orientated for they deposited to the goddess Astarte, in ceramic plates often inscribed with her name and sometimes with Tinnit's, a variety of iodine-rich fish and marine molluscs, including sea urchins, limpets, topshells, and bivalves on which they probably feasted during apposite religious rituals...

"The remains also stand as testimony to the opportunistic exploitation of resources such as birds, probably snared during migratory crossings over the central Mediterranean. Together with cattle, calves, sheep, lambs, pastries or cakes, and flowers (marigolds) they were deposited as votive offerings in honour of the deity."

Dr Vella said that the information obtained through excavations about religious rituals in Phoenician and Punic Malta was certainly not insignificant.

He said that the information being acquired was the benchmark because there was as yet no similar information in other Mediterranean countries with which it could be compared.

The area being excavated by the university was actually the rubbish dump of the temple.

The actual temple site is being worked upon by an Italian team.

Dr Vella said that for the first time this year, primary school students were also involved in the dig and those who took part were being encouraged to return to the site with their parents on Tuesday.

The involvement of primary school students proved to be a successful experience and would be repeated in years to come, Dr Vella said.