by Chris Fowler
THE CENTRAL MEDITERRANEAN ISLANDS
The Maltese Islands
Malta and Gozo remained uninhabited until probably sometime around 5000 BC, when they were settled by Neolithic colonists from Sicily, about 100km away by sea. For another millennium or so, the scanty evidence suggests that the Neolithic Maltese lived a life very similar to Sicilians and southern Italians. No burials have been recovered on Malta and Gozo from before around 4000 BC, although a few disarticulated human remains were found out of context at Ghar Dalam Cave, the type site for the islands’ earliest phase (Evans 1971).
The islands began to distance themselves culturally from Sicily and the mainland around 4000 BC with the transition from the Red Skorba style (which bears parallels with the contemporary Diana style) to the Zebbug style of pottery. In this phase, two sets of rock-cut tombs are known, at Ta Trapna (Zebbug) on Malta and at the Xaghra Circle (also known as the Brochtorff Circle) on Gozo. Both were underground chambers accessed through a vertical shaft; collective, disarticulated burials were accumulated in them, accompanied by grave goods and ochre. In the latter (Malone et al. 1995), at least sixty-five individuals had been buried, in two small chambers. Interestingly, at both of these sites an anthropomorphic statue was found which strongly resembles the stelae in the stylization of facial features, although this is somewhat earlier than the stela tradition elsewhere in Europe.
Around 3600 BC—whilst surrounding areas were entering the Copper Age—the Maltese Islands entered the most distinctive period of their prehistory, the later Neolithic or ‘Temple Period’, spanning the Ggantija, Saflieni, and Tarxien phases (Evans 1971). This lasts until about 2400 BC, when it is truncated by the quite different looking early Bronze Age Tarxien Cemetery culture (see Malone, this volume). Burial in the Temple Period continued the tradition of using rock-cut tombs for collective burials, for instance at Xemxija. However, two super-burial sites are known, the Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni on Malta (Evans 1971) and the Brochtorff Circle at Xaghra on Gozo (Malone et al. 2013). These may be associated with exceptionally large and elaborate temples nearby at Tarxien and Ggantija respectively. The Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni is a galaxy of artificially cut underground rooms on three levels, some with elaborately carved decorations mirroring the above-ground megalithic buildings of the temples. Several rooms have wall paintings in red ochre, and abundant red ochre, fine pottery, figurines, miniature ritual axes and other material culture was found. Supposedly the Hypogeum contained the remains of some 7,000 individuals; however, excavations were early in the century and poorly controlled, and only about two dozen skulls were kept. The Brochtorff Circle at Xaghra, more recently and carefully excavated, gives much more detail upon burial. Here several thousand people were buried. Most bodies were disarticulated; patterns of articulation, part representation, and other evidence suggested that each body was moved after some time to make room for further burials, but in some cases long bones and skulls were retained (Malone et al. 2013). A number of altars suggest cult practices and human figurines were abundant.
Malta is remarkable in how many human bodies are represented in ‘art’ and how different they all are (Vella Gregory and Cilia 2005). Before the temple period, a handful of small clay female figurines from Skorba (Trump 1966) generally parallel ones known in Italy and Sicily. In the temple period, there are figurines of both clay and stone, and monumental statues in stone. A common theme is a massively fat person, sometimes wearing a distinctive, knee-length pleated or striped skirt, either standing or sitting. These occur in hand-held sizes (for instance, a model of a pair of these persons was found upon an altar at the Brochtorff Circle at Xaghra) and in massive forms; the bottom half of one such being, found at Tarxien, measures 1.4m to the waist. The heads are often detachable and modelled with a formal hair-style and somewhat severe features. The gender of these persons is arguable; although they have traditionally been interpreted as females, there are no direct anatomical references and there are enough undoubted female figures to underline the point that Maltese artists were fully capable of modelling the female body when they wanted to, suggesting that the absence of identifiable female traits is meaningful. The key theme is their hyperbolic corpulence, which may have been associated with fertility, social productivity, or authority. Besides these, Maltese Neolithic figurines include a wide range of females, including the ‘Sleeping Ladies’ (corpulent women reclining upon a couch or bed); small, extremely schematic anthropomorphic pendants (isolated heads which once may have been placed detachably upon model bodies); phalluses; and the unique assemblage of nine small hand-held stone figures, mostly human, from the Brochtorff Circle at Xaghra which have been interpreted as a set of tools for ritual performances (Malone et al. 2013).
Sardinia and Corsica
Whilst Sicily’s prehistory can generally be grouped with that of southern Italy, the other two large islands of the central Mediterranean follow divergent trajectories. Here, only a few relevant points can be touched upon (Atzeni 1982; Camps 1988; Lewthwaite 1983; Lilliu 1988). Burial is poorly known for the earlier Neolithic, and (as in Italy) is varied for the middle Neolithic. In Sardinia, for example, disturbed cave burials are known at the Grotta Rifugio di Olieni, whilst at the village site of Cùccuru S’Arriu di Cabras a cemetery of rock-cut grotticella tombs was found, each containing a single burial, often with some grave goods, some including figurines. The same cemetery also contained burials in pits and other kinds of structures. The best-known Neolithic burials occur in the succeeding late Neolithic (Ozieri) phase with the elaborate domus de janas tombs such as Anghelu Ruju, Sas Concas, and Santu Pedru, hundreds of which are known throughout Sardinia. These are underground rock-cut tombs of a unique form: a horizontal entrance passage cut into a bank leads to an ante-chamber, from which small doors like square portholes lead into one or more burial chambers. Many domus de janas tombs were decorated with skeumorphic features carved into the stone representing elements of wooden architecture such as beams; they are often also painted or carved with ox-horns, spirals, and other motifs. Domus de janas tombs were often re-used in succeeding periods for long time-spans. Unfortunately, few have been excavated carefully, and it is generally assumed rather than documented that the typical burial practice was repeated single inhumation resulting in a mass of disarticulated bones. In the late fourth and third millennium both islands see the rise of megalithic burials proper; the earliest phase of this typically consists of cist-like burial chambers surrounded by a round cairn as at Li Muri; the site of Pranu Meteddu on Sardinia provides an exceptionally elaborate example associated with circles and alignments of menhirs. Rock-cut tombs continue in use in some areas, as in southern Sardinia. Long corridor dolmens follow in the Bronze Age.
FIG. 50.3. Prehistoric body imagery from Sardinia. a. figurines: middle Neolithic ‘volumetric’ style, Cuccuru S’Arriu (Santoni 2000, fig. 50.3); b. schematic late Neolithic–Copper Age style, Portoferro (Pessina and Tinè 2008, fig. 9.3); c. ‘orante’ (praying) human figures in late Neolithic ‘domus de janas’ tombs, Tomba Branca (Tanda 2000, fig. 10); d. cattle imagery, Anghelo Ruju (Contu 2000, fig. 14).
Human representations are common (Fig. 50.3), and shift genres in ways parallel to elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Sardinia’s rich figurine tradition (Lilliu 1999) begins with the ‘volumetric’ figures of the middle Neolithic Bonu Ighinu culture. These small stone or clay figures present human figures, not obviously gendered but often taken to be female, in a standard, very blocky robust form with peculiar, elaborate headgear; they are often found in burials. In the subsequent Ozieri phase, female figures evolve to an increasingly schematic form, and by the end of the tradition they include highly schematic figures such as the famous ‘Venus of Senorbi’, often of marble, with only breasts and nose breaking the flatness of the body. At about the same time, in the later fourth millennium, monumental forms emerge in both Sardinia and Corsica (Atzeni 2004; Lilliu 1999; Weiss 1990). Menhirs are known from the middle Neolithic onwards, often associated with fune
rary constructions, and from the beginning of the Copper Age these begin to take on anthropomorphic features. Genuinely anthropomorphic statue-menhirs and statue-stelae similar to those found in Italy and southern France, with faces, anatomical features such as breasts, and weaponry and other images carved upon them, are found throughout the third millennium BC. Statue-stelae are known sporadically throughout Corsica and Sardinia; the densest concentrations are found at Laconi in central Sardinia, dating to throughout the third millennium, and at Filitosa in southern Corsica, where they may originate in the Copper Age but are archaeologically associated with a Bronze Age village.
IBERIA
The prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula exhibits both generic parallels with that of the central Mediterranean and important differences. As in Italy, the transition to the Neolithic was a protracted process taking place over a millennium or more (between about 5700 BC in coastal Catalonia and along the Mediterranean coast and 4500 BC in far north-western areas). There followed a millennium or more of Neolithic life before a second set of sweeping transformations around the mid to late fourth millennium BC ushered in the Copper Age. These changes are most famously marked in the Los Millares group of south-eastern Spain and in large, fortified Copper Age sites of western Spain and Portugal (e.g. La Pijotilla, Zambujal, and São Pedro di Vilanova) but also characterize other areas of Iberia (Chapman 2008).
Prehistoric Iberia is amazingly rich in ‘art’ of all kinds, particularly for representations of the human body. Rock art is poorly dated, but most of it can probably be placed within the Neolithic and Copper Age. The three major traditions of painting within caves are Levantine, schematic, and macro-schematic art, and the major tradition of carving upon rock faces in open-air sites is Galician-Atlantic art. There is also a substantial number of both carvings and paintings found upon stones in megalithic structures (Sanchidrián 2005). These various traditions are described by Fairén-Jiménez, this volume, and here only their implications for human body representations will be touched upon. Supplementing these, the human figure is also known in occasional designs upon pottery, mostly from the Neolithic, and in a wide range of small figurines. Finally, Iberia has a strong tradition of human representations in statue-stelae; although most of these date to the Bronze Age, some appear to date to earlier periods. For Italy, it made sense to discuss burial and ‘art’ separately, but for Iberia this is much more difficult. As we will see, there are close parallels and linkages between how the human body is understood in these different contexts.
The human body in burial and art: early to middle Neolithic
It is hard to draw a general picture of burial in Iberia for the first millennium or so of the Neolithic. Burials are poorly known in many regions, and such evidence as we possess outlines a highly varied picture ((Martí Oliver 1998). Particularly throughout most of the south and east of Iberia, known burials tend to be in caves, but there are few of them and this may simply underline how little we know of other contexts and ways of disposing of the dead. Only in a few places are larger burial sites known, particularly in southern Portugal, for instance at Caldeirão (Zilhão 2000, 161). Burial rites are equally poorly known and single inhumation was probably the rule, although collective inhumation was practised at Caldeirão and there are suggestions of excarnation in the Andalusian ‘culture of the caves’ at sites such as Carizüela (Martí Oliver 1998, 191). Two main impressions bear mentioning by way of contrast with later periods: burial practice was varied both regionally and temporally, and it rarely took place in formally defined areas dedicated to the dead.
There are occasional anthropomorphic figures on Cardial Ware vessels, and in macro-schematic art. Both genres typically depict stick-figure beings with very elongated bodies, often with arms upraised; no sexual characteristics are shown. There is little we can say about them except that, if it was not simply assumed that these referred to human beings, they may represent some ambiguous category of semi-humans or cosmological beings. The most famous tradition of Iberian Neolithic art is ‘Levantine art’ (Fairén-Jiménez, this volume), which is almost unique in European Neolithic art in how it treats the human body; it strongly resembles contemporary north African rock art and may derive from that tradition. Gender in Levantine art is controversial: traditionally figures hunting and fighting were identified as males, and other figures were identified as females, but this has come into question recently. Regardless of which approach is correct, what is really striking about the body in Levantine art is how active it is: it appears running, dancing, hunting, fighting, working, in groups and alone, wearing elaborate clothes and regalia, and (in one famous image) even collecting wild honey (Beltrán Martínez 1982). Stylistically, the body is fleshed out and shown in a wide and fluid variety of positions. If the art selectively represents idealized glimpses of a valued body, Levantine art gives the impression of varied and fluid performance of social moments rather than the rigid, much more stereotyped ways of embodying value found in later prehistoric art.
The human body in burial and art: middle to later Neolithic
From the mid to late fifth millennium BC, there were a number of changes. In the north-east of Iberia, in Catalonia, the ‘pit-grave’ culture (sepolcros de fosa) appears. In many ways, the pit-grave group (which lasted to the mid fourth millennium BC) is an Iberian reflection of similar trends found across southern France and northern Italy in the Chassey-Lagozza tradition. As its name suggests, this group is defined by burials rather than by settlements or artefactual material, which in itself underlines the increasing importance of burial as a social idiom. Pit-grave burials involved single (or, rarely, double) inhumations inside shallow graves, which can be either simple earth pits or involve more elaborate stone linings. They systematically include grave goods, particularly personal ornaments but also plain, dark burnished pottery and axes. The only human representation known to be associated with this culture is the ‘Venus of Gava’, a hollow pottery female figure about 20cm high which was found inside a mine where the variscite greenstone for personal ornaments was quarried (Bosch Argilagós and Martín 1994). This unique figure includes personal ornaments so popular in the pit-grave tradition—a belt and necklace are shown—but also prominently features the eyes with lines radiating outward from them so typical of anthropomorphic representations in southern Iberia.
Elsewhere in Iberia, the archaeological record also becomes increasingly defined in terms of burial. From the mid-fifth millennium BC on, burial increasingly takes place in megalithic structures. The development of megaliths in Iberia is contemporary with that of Atlantic France, and involves many of the same structures: menhirs, stone circles, and passage graves. As in Atlantic France, the spread of megaliths in north-western Iberia coincides with the emergence of agricultural economies (Ribé et al. 1997). Variety persists; in Almeria, for example, whilst collective burials are found in caves, there are also small stone cists and circular stone tombs, some of which show evidence of social differentiation (Chapman 2003), and in Andalucia, burials were sometimes made inside subterranean structures or abandoned houses (Chapman 2008). Megaliths appear to have come into use gradually (as far as can be discerned from their often vague chronology) and were earliest in Portugal and north-west Spain, but were widespread by the fourth millennium BC (Del Rincón 1998).
Megaliths were often decorated, both in the Neolithic and in the Copper Age and with both painting and incisions. Megalithic art is found wherever megaliths are known in Iberia. Stones were marked with both geometric motifs and representational motifs; the latter include humans on their own and in hunting scenes, and the overall repertory overlaps with that of schematic art (Sanchidrián 2005; Shee Twohig 1981). Some stones are also decorated in ways suggesting that the stone itself represents a person, much as menhirs are sometimes made into statue-menhirs by adding anthropomorphic decoration; indeed, statue-menhirs may have been incorporated in megaliths and megaliths may have been seen as assemblages of persons in some sense (L. Garcia Sanjuán, per
s. comm.). As in Breton megaliths, ‘abstract’ signs predominate in passages, and larger, more distinct anthropomorphs are sometimes preferentially found in the back of the central chamber, perhaps suggesting an approach to a supernatural presence inside the tomb.
