Malta’s Prehistoric Treasures  
by David Trump, additional narrative Sharon Sultana, photography and design Daniel Cilia, Heritage Malta, 2019.

With the death of David Trump on August 31, 2016, Maltese archaeology lost one its leading luminaries. He had arrived on the islands 62 years before, a bright young 23-year-old Cambridge grad­uate. He came to assist the legendary J.D. Evans, who was to publish his seminal Prehistoric Antiquities of the Maltese Islands in 1971.

Between 1958 and 1963, Trump served as curator of archaeology at the Museums Department. His own work all over the islands was of exceptional value, culminating in his excavations at Skorba, which led to the recalibration of the Carbon 14 sequences, as a result making the temples one of the oldest free-standing remains in the world known to exist. Göbekli Tepe in Turkey now seems to have taken that accolade, being half-a-millennium earlier.

However, Trump still maintained that Malta’s temples were the world’s first free-standing architecture, since the Turkish ones are dug into an artificial mound.

Trump’s lectures, delivered in his typical soft-spoken way, were a constant delight, seasoning deep scholarship with wit. His wife Bridget, no mean scholar herself, was his constant companion and support, and willingly remained in his great shadow.

My own experiences of Trump was as his editor for Malta Prehistory and Temples. During these few months I learned more about Maltese archaeology than in many previous years of reading. In his last book, written with additional text by Sharon Sultana, Malta’s Prehistoric Treasures, Trump focuses on 50 of the most important ‘treasures’ that represent our unique prehistoric remains. He brings these to light with short, incisive descriptions, with the aid of old diagrams and pictures, and excellent and often eye-opening photographs by Daniel Cilia.               

Malta’s prehistoric treasures are not the dazzling grave goods of Tutankhamun or the awe-inspiring terracotta army of Xian, but some are nevertheless of exceptional archaeological value and technological mastery, as well as being things of sheer beauty and no less intriguing.

The Jadeite from the Alps, which is one of the relatively unknown treasures.

As Trump explains, for archaeologists it is not necessarily an object’s cash value that makes it a treasure. As an example he quotes the burnt bread roll at Ta’ Ġawhar, which he values more than the gold earring found in the same place.

Then there is artistic appeal, while some objects intrigue us because they remind us of how little we still know. One example of the latter is the shaman’s cache from the Xagħra Stone Circle – unique objects of their kind which would have certainly been described as obvious modern fakes had they not be found in situ.

The burnt bread roll at Ta’ Ġawhar he values more than the gold earring found in the same place

The first ‘treasure’, for example, is one most people would not dream of stooping down to pick up. It is the tooth of an elephant, which tells us much about Malta’s very distant past, its land link to the continent, and its subsequent cutting-off and the ‘dwarfing’ of many species.

Clay sherds have no general appeal but these broken pieces of pottery are invaluable to the archaeologist. Trump himself was instrumental in using such odds and pieces to create an entire new prehistoric sequence for the islands.

Chorus Girl

The six joined pieces with their chevron markings from an  Għar Dalam phase jar tells of outside influences, just as the obsidian cores testify to some trade with Lipari and Pantelleria, either directly, or more likely through Sicilian intermediaries. The jadeite amulet found at Xagħra must have been moved in some way or other all the way from the foothills of the French Alps.

Particularly charming are the sherd with the ‘hoopees’ and the Żebbuġ phase sherd with the ‘matchstick’ human figure which may point to the arrival of new people from the north.

The temples and the various cult artefacts found in them make them “more informative on religious practices than perhaps any other prehistoric monuments in the world”. These range from elaborately decorated altars to flint knives, to animal remains to pots (some so huge to make them a marvel of technology in their firing, without having to resort to the ‘alien’ interventions so popular on the Discovery Channel).

Then there are the statues and statuettes. The stump of the Tar­xien giant asexual statue, partly destroyed just before Temi Zammit’s excavations began, generates wonder and questions. There is nothing asexual, however, in the double or triple phalli.

But it is the smaller statuettes that are paragons of sheer exquisite beauty and expressiveness. Some are tiny, the size of a fingernail,others a bit larger, but all are fascinating.

The knobbed double-spiral object.

There is the embracing couple, the mysterious but haunting shell-pierced  pregnant woman, the beautiful Venus of Ħaġar Qim – “a masterpiece comparable with the finest works of sculptors anywhere”, the couple with the baby from Xagħra, the iconic Sleeping Lady and the tiny boneheads. Then there is the Chorus Girl, which is definitely an early work by Henry Moore.

The Bronze Age left little of comparable visual treasures, but then their daggers and axes have their own stories to tell. Do they tell us that these people lived in more bellicose times?

More alluring are the weird disc figurines, which give no clue as to what they were used for. The repaired pot indicates that frugality existed even then.

And did some potter from Calabria come to ply his trade among the Baħrija community?

And finally there are the cart ruts, which can be explained in scores of clever ways that can all be proven instantly wrong.

With this book, Trump salutes his Malta connection, a connection that proved mutually valuable and which will never be forgotten.

His name will remain firmly etched in our globigerina stone.