When we made the train trip down through Italy to Malta that I describe in earlier posts, I began to get a sense of some of the ways in which Malta and Italy have been linked through time. So I was very keen to attend the half-day seminar held on Gozo as part of the week long exploration of Malta's prehistory with visiting archaeologist, David Trump, because it was about the archaeological links between Malta and Sicily.
The seminar was held at the Teatru Astra in Victoria, Gozo as you can see in the photo above. Incidentally, the theatre is also the home of the local band and there is a statue of the band's founder in the foyer looking much like Banjo Patterson! Malta is fond of its local community leaders and there are street statues of the men who shaped the small towns and villages everywhere. Local bands are an important aspect of village life and they contribute enormously to the competitive nature of the parish fiestas. In the room where the seminar was held there is also a huge cabinet, floor to ceiling, with a beautifully boxed collection of band music.
I knew from traveling to Ggantija as described in my previous post that I couldn't make it to Gozo in time for the morning start unless I went over the previous day and stayed overnight. So I booked at the Downtown hotel in Victoria and travelled over on Wednesday afternoon after going to my bobbin lace-making class in Marsaxlokk in the morning. I arrived at the bus terminus in Victoria as it was getting dark (the clocks went back here a few weeks ago so the evening comes in quite early soon after 5.00pm) The hotel is new and a little way back from the main street so difficult to find but it is cheap and adequate. I checked in and wandered up to the main square to find something to eat. I ended up sitting on the street (literally) facing the square and watched the evening life of Gozo play out as I ate my fish and chips with half a carafe of excellent Gozo red wine. Two men carefully took down the four Maltese flags outside the Council offices, cars drew up outside shops as they closed for the night to pick up the women workers in the family, tourists reprimanded their children as they ate their dinner in the main square.
I was up early the following morning so that I could explore the Citadella in Victoria before the seminar started at 9.00. The Citadella is the old fortified centre of the town built of course by the Knights and like many of the old fortifications recycled as a tourist venue with working craft shops, museum and heritage offices. I got there before anything was open and it was great to wander along the battlements and streets when no-one else was there. There are 360 degree views of Gozo and the buildings have been neatly restored.
At the seminar, David Trump spoke first drawing on his half century of research in Malta and Sicily particularly pre-historic pottery. He demonstrated using slides projected onto an inadequate screen (window blinds that kept moving!) how there were similarities in design and decoration across the different pre-historic periods, clear evidence of the import of materials into Malta such as flint, ochre and polished stone axes, and also sudden changes in style that could be attributed to the arrival of a group of people or even a particular artist whose ideas superceded the traditional way of working. It is difficult to determine which way the influence worked. For example, the rock cut tombs dating from pre 4000BC show contact between Malta and Sicily and even up to the Orkney islands but we can't say if this was because of migration from one place to another or local response to a common need or the spread of ideas through trade.
Some changes were sudden and might be attributed to invasion, but other changes were slow and are more likely to be the result of drift when slight differences creep in as the craft is passed down through the mother line. Some changes may also be deliberate on the part of locals in that a community might wish to make something special and so they draw on the ideas and skills of an external craftsperson.
David Trump's presentation raised fascinating questions about the ways in which diverse cultures influence each other and change over time. The second speaker was Dr Nick Vella from the University of Malta who focussed on a particular Italian archaeologist, Luigi Maria Ungolini who worked in Malta during 1920s and 30s. Nick Vella has unearthed Ungolini's detailed notes and photos of his research on the excavations in Tarxien (he wasn't allowed to dig) in the archives of a folk museum outside Rome and he is currently working on the publication of a book using this material to support his contention that our ideas about the past change over time. Since my visit to Ghar Dalem, the cave of bones that give evidence of the earliest phase of pre-history in Malta (see my previous post) I have noticed how the history of exploration of a site is often as interesting as the site itself.
During the 20s and 30s there was tension in Malta between pro-Italian and the pro-English factions expressed, for example, in heated debate around language to be used in schools - English, Italian or Maltese. Ungolini was sent to Malta by the fascist Italian government who were keen to support sympathisers in Malta through cultural exchange. He arrived with a team including an artist who made elevations and drawings of the temples (exhibited in Rome in 1990s) and an architect who published a book after Ungolini died young in 1936. Ungolini could mingle freely amongst the pro-Italian Maltese and gave lectures at the Casa del Facia in Valletta but his work was never published.
The Italian/English tension in Malta was of course played out horribly in the ferocious bombing of Valletta in World War 2. After the war, the British sent an archaeologist, John Evans, to Malta and he published one of the first definitive works on the prehistoric antiquities of the Maltese Islands. Nick Vella's book about Ungolini's work due for publication in 2009 promises to highlight the politics and tension that underlie our supposedly dispassionate research.
As a concluding exclamation mark, Dr Nick Vella had to leave the seminar promptly in order to get back to the university and record his vote. The academic staff at Malta University, one of the oldest universities in Europe, voted almost unanimously against the University's inadequate pay offer and that tension is continuing as the union pursues the negotiations that have been going on for four years. Having experienced the same struggle in the context of Australian universities and witnessed it in other parts of the world I am left wondering about the direction of influence across cultures!
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