Phoenician and Punic tombs in Malta

Abstract

This study examines the Phoenician and Punic tombs discovered in the Maltese Islands from various aspects. The first chapter considers the historical and archaeological background of the Phoenicians in Malta between 700 B.C. and A.D. 100. The second part (Chapters 2 and 3) deals with the correlation between the distribution of tombs and geomorphology, water resources, soils and land-use; this section also discusses which areas of the Maltese Islands were likely to be inhabited during this period. The third section of this study (Chapter 4) concentrates on the type of society which emerges from the burial evidence during the Phoenician Period. The fourth part (Chapters 5 and 6) is concerned with the dating and utilization of tombs, while it also estimates the living and buried population of the Maltese Islands; this section also attempts to calculate a potential population for the Maltese archipelago from different land-use figures. The final part of this dissertation examines with different maps the location of Punic urban and rural settlements in the Maltese Islands in relation to later historical settlement patterns during the Roman and Byzantine eras, the Middle Ages and the Modern Period.