8. Skeletal remains from Borġ in-Nadur

The overall study of the skeletal remains from Borġ in-Nadur held at the National Museum of Archaeology of Valletta led to the identification of 188 specimens. 153 of them were collected by D.H. Trump during the excavation of the settlement in 1959 (Trump 1961), 11 were catalogued as coming from the temple without further specific indication of which of M. Murray’s three campaigns (1923; 1925; 1929) they originated from, and 24 specimens were labelled as generically coming from Borġ in-Nadur.

With regards to the skeletal remains from the settlement, almost all of the trenches produced examples, with a higher concentration of findings in trenches B, H and N (Table 1):

The range of species identified includes Ovis vel Capra, Sus Scrofa, Bos Taurus, Canis Sp., Equus Sp. and significantly even Homo Sapiens. Due to the poor conditions, 47 of the 153 samples from the settlement were not identifiable (Chart 1).

Besides a predictably important presence of Ovis vel Capra, Sus Scrofa and Bos Taurus in almost all the contexts, the occurrence of Canis Sp. in J4 and N4 and of Equus Sp. only in H2 (Tables 2-10, Figs. 1-6) is remarkable.

Andrea Messina and Davide Tanasi

Table 1. Attestation of skeletal remains in the contexts of the Borġ in-Nadur settlement.

Chart 1. Percentile presence of the taxa at the Borġ in-Nadur settlement.

Trench LayersA 4B 2b, 3H 2I 5J 2, 4L 26N 7, 8O 4P 5

The identification of human samples in B2b and N7, is also extremely significant and can be helpful for the interpretation of the function of those contexts (see Tanasi, this volume, chapter 3).

The most representative of the contexts is certainly H2, which summarizes the assemblage of findings set above the floor level of Hut 2. In this perspective, the analysis of the

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Table 2. Samples from trench A.

Table 3. Samples from trench B.

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Table 4. Samples from trench H.

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Table 6. Samples from trench J.

Table 7. Samples from trench L.

Table 5. Samples from trench I.

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Table 8. Samples from trench N.

Table 9. Samples from trench O.

Table 10. Samples from trench P.

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Fig. 1. Samples from trench B.

Fig. 2. Samples from trench H.

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Fig. 3. Samples from trench N.

Fig. 4. Samples from the Temple.

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Fig. 6. Samples from trenches A, B, I, J, L, N, O and P.

Fig. 5. Samples from Borġ in-Nadur.

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Chart 2. Percentile presence of the taxa in trench H, layer 2.

skeletal remains can further help to understand which kind of activities were carried out in that space (Chart 2).

The scarce amount of samples attributed to the temple (Table 11) contradicts the high number mentioned by M. Murray in her reports. The absence in this group of human specimens, known to have been recovered in a crevice at the base of the east site of megalith 5 and 7 in the forecourt (Murray 1923, 27), suggests that a part of the skeletal remains collected between 1923 and 1929 have been misplaced. However, the identification of at least another example of Equus Sp., also from the temple, is remarkable.

Nothing can be said about the group of 24 samples generically coming from Borġ in-Nadur (Table 12), due to the uncertainty of their provenance. The average presence of Ovis vel Capra and Sus Scrofa is compatible with the evidence of the settlement and the temple.

The diversity of occurrence is due in part to a real difference in abundance of different animals representing the various classes on the island. However, it is also likely that one or more factors of distortion (bias) have influenced the available data. The factors that influence the composition of the faunal remains are: ecology, animal behaviour and taphonomy of vertebrates.

Table 11. Samples from the temple.

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Table 12. Samples generically from Borġ in-Nadur.

Another potential source of bias concerns the different attention reserved to the recovery and study of some taxa. Another important factor that may represent a bias in the dataset concerns the size of specimen. The different sizes of the animals had an important impact also on their chances of recovery. The remains of small vertebrates, like almost all amphibians, many reptiles, many birds, and even some orders of mammals, require techniques of sediment screening to be adequately recovered (Kowalski 2001).

The over-representation of large mammals may not have strictly taphonomic causes but may be strongly influenced by the attention that such remains may have received from the archaeologist. The under-representation of small mammals may be largely caused by inadequate recovery techniques employed on site, including the lack of appropriate sieving of all the deposit excavated.

For considering the zooarchaeological data about the Maltese Bronze Age, this preliminary survey of the human and animal remains from Borġ in-Nadur represents a significant advance. The contextualization of these results in the framework of the faunal population of central Mediterranean prehistory and the extension of the research to other Maltese Bronze Age sites, as for example Għar Mirdum (Tanasi 2014) will certainly shed

light on some still unknown aspects of ancient life at Borġ in-Nadur.

References

Kowalsky, K. 2001. Pleistocene rodents of Europe, Folia Quaternaria 72: 3–389.

Murray, M.A. 1923. Excavations in Malta: Part I. London: Bernard Quaritch.

Murray, M.A. 1925. Excavations in Malta: Part II. London: Bernard Quaritch.

Murray, M.A. 1929. Excavations in Malta: Part III. London: Bernard Quaritch.

Tanasi, D. 2014, Lighting up the dark. The role of GħarMirdum in Maltese prehistory, in Gullì, D. (ed.), From Cave to Dolmen. Ritual and symbolic aspects in the prehistory between Sciacca, Sicily and the central Mediterranean, 287-308. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Trump, D.H. 1961. The Later Prehistory of Malta, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 27: 253-262.

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Bionotes

Andrea Messina holds a Ph.D. in Animal Biology and he is Adjunct professor at the University of Palermo. His research interests include palaeoanthropology of Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic Sicily and the skeleton biology of prehistoric individuals of Sicily. He is author of several scientific publications in those fields.

Davide Tanasi holds a Ph.D. in Archaeology and is Professor of Archaeology at Arcadia University, The College of Global Studies – Arcadia Sicily Center. His research interests include Mediterranean prehistory, island archaeology, archaeometry of ancient ceramics, computer graphics in archaeology, and digital communication of cultural heritage. He has authored a hundred scientific papers in these fields and produced 3D documentaries about Sicilian archaeology and cultural heritage. His publications include La Sicilia e l’arcipelago maltese nell’età del Bronzo Medio (Officina di Studi Medievali, 2008) and Site, artefacts and landscape. Prehistoric Borġ in-Nadur, Malta (Polimetrica, 2011, co-edited with N.C. Vella). He is the director of the Field School in Archaeology of Arcadia University in Sicily and editor of the international journal Open Archaeology (De Gruyter).