Man - Land relations in temple period Gozo

Abstract

The huge investment required for the erection and eventual running of the Maltese megalithic complexes highlights their central role in the temple builders’ communal life. Their construction and layout qualify them as theatres for ceremonial and ritual deeds for the invocation of supernatural forces, namely some form of being or beings related to fertility and the regeneration of life. In this respect, the said temples must have had a strong link with agriculture, the backbone of the temple builders’ subsistence economy, to the extent that their location seems to have been dictated by the footprint of the most favorable crop-cultivation plains in the Maltese Islands. This distribution pattern is particularly evident in Gozo, where besides the well-known and imposing twin temple complex of Ä gantija, one comes across several more contemporaneous sites, including five more temple ruins, two settlements, and a hypogeum. These sites are all sitting within or along the perimeter of the fertile and vast plain extending from Rabat to Għajnsielem.