The Malta Historical Society is hosting a public lecture about Malta’s Neolithic period at the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta on Saturday, September 14, at 10am.
The guest speaker is photographer Daniel Cilia, whose work has graced over 150 publications celebrating the Maltese islands, their history, culture and natural beauty. Sixteen of these books focus specifically on Malta’s Neolithic period. He was also the editor of the well-known 440-page book Malta Before History, The World’s Oldest Freestanding Stone Architecture published in 2004.
On Saturday, Cilia will give a presentation titled Neolithic Malta: What We Have, What We Lost & What We Could Lose! His photography will showcase all of Malta’s Neolithic temples and hypogea that are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, as well as several lesser-known Neolithic sites that still survive today around the Maltese islands.
Using archival material, primarily from Heritage Malta's photographic archives, he will reveal many sites that were destroyed during the last century. Much of this visual record is drawn from the remarkable Farrugia-Gravino Albums of Archaeological Sites, held at the Heritage Malta Archives.
These two albums feature photographs by Laurie Gravino and Publius Farrugia, who, as young boys immediately after World War II, were introduced to Fr John Farrugia, an amateur archaeologist from Żejtun. Fr Farrugia invited them to document all the known archaeological sites on the island, a task they completed over the following three years with a small box camera.
One album records major sites such as Tarxien, Ġgantija, Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, Borġ in-Nadur, etc and the temples of Skorba before their excavation by David Trump in the 1960s. The other album contains photographs, sketches and drawings of locations and artefacts, including pottery sherds, from many Maltese and Gozitan megalithic sites that no longer exist.
Many of these photographs and drawings will be shown during the lecture.
The presentation will conclude with Cilia explaining the current threats to the preservation of Malta's remaining Neolithic sites.
Sponsored by The Alfred Mizzi Foundation, the lecture will be delivered in English and will be around an hour long. Entrance is free.