Tombe, templi e santuari a Malta fra IV e III millennio a.C. e loro successivo riuso

The megalithic cultic centres in Malta are not, as Colin Renfrew (1973) stated 50 years ago “The world’s first stone temples”: the large stone platform with access ramp at Monte d’Accoddi in Sardinia is likely older, not to mention the Near Eastern megalithic centre of Göbekli Tepe. Nonetheless, the building of such complex megalithic structures in Malta, along with the large funerary hypogea of Ħal Saflieni and Xagħra, during the Late Neolithic (corresponding to the 4th and first half of the 3rd millennia BC) constitutes an early historic phenomenon of remarkable complexity in a small archipelago, whose meaning is still scholarly debated. The building of these outstanding megalithic centres ceased at the end of the Late Neolithic, yet their extraordinary monumental role in the ancient landscape of Malta did not fade-out: several of them, including the monumental hypogea, where continuously occupied over the Bronze Age, likely maintaining a strong socio-ideological importance. In the case of the Tas-Silġ sanctuary some of the ‘old’ megalithic buildings remained relevant even during the subsequent historic cycles, from the Phoe- nician-Punic to the Byzantine periods.