Ġgantija - Isabelle Vella Gregory

ĠGANTIJA

by Isabelle Vella Gregory • Photography: Daniel Cilia

As development threatens Ġgantija, Isabelle Vella Gregory explores the fascinating and complex landscape of Ġgantija and surrounds. The impressive megalithic complex is part of an extraordinary human story that is at risk of being lost.

Once upon a time there was a giantess who lived on Gozo. People would see her carrying large stones on her head. She carried her baby in a sling, a basket of flax and beans in her pocket. They saw her carrying stones while eating beans and sorting flax.

(Adapted from Fr Manuel Magri)

All megalithic sites were placed at very specific points in the landscape.

The story of a giantess is perhaps one of the most compelling folk tales. Picture this, a very tall woman who is not only imbued with superhuman strength, she is also able to tend to her child while sorting flax and snacking on beans… and of course carrying megaliths to build Ġgantija. In other versions of the tale she is credited with building a round dwelling at Ta’ Ċenċ, a large building at Borġ l-Għarib, and many more.

Mostly, she is seen as a giantess carrying stones but what the stories do not necessarily reflect on is the fact that this woman designed, planned and built a number of buildings around Gozo, all while tending to her child. We do not know whence she came, but we most certainly know where she ended up – and in between we have the roads she travelled.

Her most famous building is Ġgantija. Interestingly, Magri does not record similar tales about the Maltese sites – did a giantess also build Ħaġar Qim or Tarxien? What we do know, however, is that these complex buildings have been lodged in consciousness for thousands of years, long after they were built. Commonly called temples, these stone complexes were built and maintained over a long period of time and as evidenced by folk tales and a number of other sources, they never disappeared completely from memory.

The folk tales make one thing clear: the giantess was not just focused on Ġgantija - she created a whole landscape. Glimpses of this world survived in folk tales and later in art (for example the wonderfully evocative watercolours by Charles de Brochtorff), and they have been gently teased into being at the trowel’s edge.

While you might think of Ġgantija and other places as monuments, generations before us thought of them as places that are alive. They spent an enormous amount of time and effort in creating these places, enlarging them and lovingly maintaining them over many years. They were not simply ‘places’.

The anthropologist Tim Ingold speaks of dwelling, as distinct from building. Dwelling is so much more than building say, a block of houses or apartments and living in them. It is about having a deep connection and relationship with the entirety of the place around you, beyond your own four walls, and actively engaging with the world around you.

Disentangling the complex of Ġgantija, we have two ‘temples’ contained within a common external wall. Construction started c. 3600 BCE and continued until the so-called end of the Late Neolithic. Ġgantija, like other megalithic sites, was rooted in a dwelling perspective from the outset. It was not placed there by accident.

Indeed, as Reuben Grima has shown, all megalithic sites were placed at very specific points in the landscape. Indeed, he shows that the sites played a role in structuring the natural divisions in the landscape. In other words, people were very much conscious of the land they inhabited and they built this series of megalithic buildings in a way which transformed the physical and social geography of the Maltese Islands.

Late Neolithic life, however, was not merely about these sites and Ġgantija offers one of the most clear demonstrations of an incredibly complex physical and cosmological landscape. Looking around Ġgantija, there is the Għar ta’ Rejżu to the southwest, and some 45 m north there is the North Cave. Both contained traces of human activity. Some 400 m to the southwest of Ġgantija, there was the main burial complex, known as the Xagħra Circle. Once again standing in Ġgantija and gazing to the south, there was another temple under the present Xagħra Church (incidentally, recorded by Fr Magri), and c.700 m west of the Xagħra Circle there are the still visible remains of the Santa Verna temple. Much like the folk tale of the giantess tells us, Late Neolithic Gozo was a very busy landscape.

Ġgantija, magnificent as it is, did not exist by itself. What makes this landscape so interesting (and valuable) is that it encapsulates the many stages of the human life cycle. In one small corner of the world, we have settlements (granted until now these are fleeting traces), Megalithic buildings and burials. Within temples we find a vast array of objects, many of which are fairly (and wonderfully) mundane, for example stone tools and plain pots. We also find a number of evocative figurines – these also appear in burial places. Life and death are inextricably linked not just by buildings and material culture, but by a landscape that has a strong sense of dwelling. Indeed, the prehistory of the Maltese Islands is remarkable precisely because it captures these cosmological beliefs.

Starting c.3600 BCE we see not just the emergence of a new architecture, but a new of way of thinking about the world. Temples are built with the intention of being a lasting place in the landscape – enlarged and maintained over a long period of time. They are placed at specific points in a landscape that plays an active role in human life.

These rituals and beliefs become increasingly complex, reaching a floruit in the Tarxien phase. Temples themselves were a hive of activity – not just in terms of different rituals, as seen by the use of different altars and hearths, but also in terms of material culture. Many have traces of outbuildings. We find traces of burnt food and commensality is a powerful tool in establishing and maintaining social relations. Not only were these activities crucial for the present and future, they also hinged on the next generation continuing to sustain these practices. In turn, subsequent generations honoured the memory of their ancestors.

From the Xagħra Circle we learn that death was a complex and drawn-out affair. To modern eyes, it might seem really macabre. But while we now favour swift burials, in the Late Neolithic people took their time to come to terms with life and death. The site, like other places, has a long life history, with the earliest burials dating to the Middle Neolithic (long before temples were built). In the Late Neolithic it is transformed from a series of natural caves into a monumental site, surrounded by a retaining wall and with striking architectural features inside.

Temples are built with the intention of being a lasting place in the landscape - enlarged and maintained over a long period of time.

Two early 19th-century depictions of Ġgantija and the Xagħra Circle by Charles Frederick de Brocktorff (National Library of Malta)

Burial is not just communal, it involves breaking the body into its constituent parts. To achieve this, it meant returning to the site a number of times. It meant waiting for the body to decay naturally and then carefully taking it apart. Skeletal remains are not haphazardly thrown across the site; they are arranged in neat piles of skulls, long bones and residual elements. They are placed there with care. In some areas there are individual burials, perhaps acting as an anchor to the rest. The living did not simply remember the dead: they touched them, they moved them, they smelled the decaying flesh.

The living ensured that all the funerary rites were completed; that the departed became part of the collective memory. This process was not restricted to the funerary site. Consider this: the Xagħra Circle is part of a broader landscape encompassing Ġgantija, Santa Verna, the temple beneath the Xewkija church, Ta’ Marżiena, Borġ l-Imramma and others. This is precisely what anthropologists mean by a dwelling perspective - and these ideas are echoed in our folk tales.

There is more. Late Neolithic dwelling also included a rich visual culture - a remarkable repertory of figurines ranging from the minute to the monumental, from the excessively large and sexually ambiguous to detailed female forms and phalli. Perhaps the most evocative is the (incorrectly named) Shaman’s cache from the Xagħra Circle. This group of nine limestone figures has nothing to do with shamans, in truth it is much more interesting. Originally bundled and buried together, these consist of six figurines referencing the human form, three small but intriguing figurines and a small bowl. The ones referencing the human form have sometimes been described as ‘unfinished’. Far from being unfinished, they encapsulate the human body in its different stages of existence. Consider this: they are part of a society in which life and death exist on a continuum, where the end does not come with death. Indeed, upon biological death one starts a process of being reassimilated into the community of the living and the dead.

Such rituals are complex and require time and energy. As we know from anthropology, human beings engage in all sorts of rituals – whether to mark the passage into adulthood or from this world to the next. These are not just significant moments in a person’s life, they are also times of transformation. They can also be dangerous if procedures are not followed in the correct order. Rituals are of fundamental importance for a community, whether they mark the entry of a child into its religious community by baptism, or the annual celebration of a saint or indeed passing between this world and the next.

The Xagħra figurines evocatively show these transformations, with the smaller ones perhaps representing that liminal stage when someone is neither human nor an ancestor, hence the human faces on a small pillar. The head of a pig is particularly intriguing and can be viewed as a companion or protector animal for one’s journey perhaps. Let us not forget that the duality between animals and humans is a modern invention and indeed we have plenty

Reconstruction of the Xagħra Circle superimposed on an aerial photograph

of evidence for a complex relationship between animals and humans in the Late Neolithic (see for example the animal friezes at Tarxien).

More importantly, each figurine shows signs of use. Each one was handled multiple times. Each could be held in the palm of one’s hand or inserted in the soil. This group of figurines was immensely powerful. It did not simply tell the story of life and death, it enabled its re-enactment. Each figurine could be moved in different directions, combined and recombined with others to tell the most powerful of stories. And when the biography of these figurines was complete, they were tied together with string and carefully deposited as a group. We may not know what led to that final event, but these figurines remain one of the most powerful and evocative materializations of cosmology in the world.

At some point, the complexities of Late Neolithic life were forgotten; but glimpses survived into folk tales. It is perhaps appropriate that this collective landscape was attributed to a single giantess, the literary archetype for creation. As traces of this landscape of power and memory continue to shrink, we would do well to fiercely guard what is left – because what we have is not simply a series of monuments but one of the most evocative stories of human life. n

Ġgantija South portal at night Ġgantija South from inside

Ġgantija South first apses from wall

The Xagħra Circle is part of a broader landscape encompassing Ġgantija, Santa Verna, the temple beneath the Xewkija church, Ta’ Marżiena, Borġ l-Imramma and others.

Ġgantija site with examples of neighbouring development applications marked in red

Ġgantija is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and and Grade 1 monument. The main temple lies within a ‘Site of Archaeological Importance’, designated to ensure its protection. Yet the boundaries of this archaeological site are under constant threat from new and excessive development, burgeoning beyond acceptable limits.

These concerns include applications that involve building blank party walls impinging on views encircling Ġgantija, increases in development density, and excavation for garages or swimming pools. Besides the temples themselves, overdevelopment in the area negatively impacts the relationship between the site and its context.

The construction boom in Gozo is gradually destroying the character of the island, and also affects its archaeological heritage which is of world importance.

South entrance from inside

REFERENCES: Reuben Grima, ‘The Landscape Context of Megalithic Architecture’, in Malta Before History: The World’s Oldest Free-Standing Stone Architecture, ed. by Daniel Cilia (Malta: Midsea Books, 2004), 327-45; Reuben Grima, ‘Landscape, Territories, and the Life-Histories of Monuments in Temple Period Malta’, in Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 21:1 (2008), 35-56; Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London and New York: Routledge, 2000); Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).

Isabelle Vella Gregory holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. She has worked in the central Mediterranean and is currently Deputy Director of excavations in Jebel Moya, Sudan.