In Netflix's British drama The Dig, archaeologist Stuart Piggott, played by Ben Chaplin, refers to a brief stop in Malta in 1943 while travelling from Cairo to Algiers.

Accompanied by fellow archaeologist Glyn Daniel, the pair spent two “blissful” days on the island, “inspecting megalithic monuments and rock-cut tombs on the island, several spattered with bits of German and Italian aircraft,” as stated by the British Academy’s Roger Mercer in 1998.

But, in a post on Facebook, the National Museum of Archaeology says that Piggot was, however, to leave a more significant mark on Maltese archaeology.

He was one of the external experts on a commission supervising the defining study, Malta Ancient Monuments Survey, which recorded Malta's prehistoric monuments, excavations and objects found there.

This, eventually, became the “still to-go-to reference book” on Maltese prehistoric monuments, J. D Evans’ “The Prehistoric Antiquities of the Maltese Islands”, published in 1971, the museum said.

The Dig tells the story of a British widow who, on the eve of World War II, hires a self-taught archaeologist to dig up mysterious formations on her land, leading to a staggering find.

It stars, among others, Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes and Lily James.