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45 3 In the early prehistory of the Maltese islands, the construction of the ritualized use of caves and cave-like spaces above and below ground was an important materialized multiple metaphor for the rituals of the living and the dead, reproducing in miniature form the island itself. A further instance is the historical genesis of the cave from subterranean origins, above ground and then back below ground. Another is inherent in the qualities of cave materials. A further linked metaphor is that of the construction process using those materials. Once constructed, the cave formed a metaphorical process of physical constraint followed by infilling. A focal theme is the intentionality or nonintentionality of stratigraphy, as well as other construction. Ambiguity may have been deliberate, and the intention multivocal. The analysis will proceed at two scales, the macro and the micro. At the macroscale, we ask: Are the rituals characterized by the closure of a stratigraphic cycle, with clearance followed by depositional and sometimes iconoclastic closure? There is evidence from the Brochtorff Circle at Xaghrathatmostofthedepositsbelongtoonebroadphase, whichmayhavebeenprecededbyclearance,andconcluded by intense stratigraphy formation and iconoclasm. At a microscale, the Circle site includes a pit sequence in the entrance area that appears to be a deliberate male cultural construction of stratigraphy, probably assembled in reverse order of antiquity. At the base there is an intact male who appears to have been deliberately covered by the skulls of his male ancestors. At Hagar Qim, a series of corpulent images were deliberately placed under the threshold of the temple before the closure of the ritual process. The cave or enclosed space was a dominant ritual theme of Maltese prehistory. This chapter principally makes comparison between two caves culturally constructed underground for mortuary practices (Hal Saflieni and Brochtorff Circle at Xaghra) and several ritual structures culturally constructed above ground (most specifically the megalithic “temples” of Tarxien, Ggantija, Hagar Qim, and Mnajdra, which we reclass as aboveground caves for the present purposes). The Materialized Metaphor Materialized metaphors underwrite much of later Euro­ pean prehistory. One prominent example is that of the “house,” which slips between the realms of the living and the dead. Ian Hodder is one main exponent of this idea (Hodder 1990), where he notes the metaphorical relationship between the houses of the living and the houses of the dead in the European Neolithic, building on observations that go back to the time of Sprockhoff (1938) and Childe (1949). This theme of the longue durée relationship between the living places of the living and the dead also has much currency in the European Iron Age, and, more specifically, has been frequently explored in the study of the Caves of the Living, Caves of the Dead ExperiencesAboveandBelowGroundinPrehistoricMalta Simon K.F. Stoddart and Caroline A.T. Malone Simon K.F. Stoddart and Caroline A.T. Malone 46 ing portable objects that are also principally made of local materials (Stoddart and Malone 2008). Caves could have had a metonymic rather than metaphorical role. Maltese monumental constructions have already been considered metaphorical representations of the islands themselves (Robb 2001) or of a materialized cosmology that contains both islands and sea (Grima 2001). The symbolism could, however, be metonymical or more strictly synecdochical. What could be more symbolic of the islands themselves than an elaboration of a significant part of that very island, the cave, constructed out of, or containing, a redolent, suggestive combination of key island features: stone, sediment, and water, and peopled by vegetation, animals, and humans? Indeed one of the creative actions of the prehistoric Maltese was to create the so-called oracle rooms, which could be considered caves within caves. This situation is not one of chance, since Malta is a limestone landscape rich in caves like that of the Yucatan, the Dordogne, or the karstic Balkans. In the case of Malta, the prominence of caves is promoted by the relative invisibility of domestic constructions, which were insubstantial (or hidden by later monumental constructions), as with so much Neolithic settlement evidence (for example the “tethered mobility” of Britain [Malone 2004; Whittle 1996]). The populations of Late Neolithic Malta appear to be tethered to substantial monumental constructions which, this chapter argues, comprise parallel cultural cave systems above and below ground, popularly called the Maltese Temples (a shorthand for significant monumental ritual places) (figure 3.2). These are immense stonebuilt and roofed structures of some considerable antiquity (fourth millennium BC), although no longer the oldest freestanding stone constructions in the world (Badischen Landesmuseum Karlsruhe 2007; Schmidt 2006). The...

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