Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/768342
16 IN a year that has claimed so many cherished celebrities and interna- tional icons, it is easy to overlook other less immediately identifiable casualties of 2016. Largely over- shadowed by the passing of such world famous icons as Fidel Castro, David Bowie and George Michael, among this year's obituaries there was also a certain Dr David Trump – not, of course, to be confused with the slightly better-known US President of (almost) the same name – who passed away in Sep- tember at the age of 85. Outside the sphere for which he was best known locally – namely, archaeology – this detail may seem insignificant in the annals of 2016. Within academic circles, however, Trump was by all accounts a ce- lebrity in his own right: a man who helped shape much of our under- standing of Malta's unique prehis- toric heritage, in the course of more than 60 years of fieldwork and re- search. So extensive was his contribution that Anthony Bonanno, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Malta, finds it difficult to quantify. "It is not easy to do justice to Da- vid Trump's invaluable contribu- tion to Maltese archaeology, more specifically to Maltese prehistory," he begins when asked for a specific assessment. "Trump took up from his mentor and predecessor, Prof. John Evans, the task of sorting out the chronological sequence of the different phases of Malta's prehis- tory, and further refined it and enlarged it. As a result, Malta has probably the neatest and most com- prehensible sequence of prehistoric cultural development of the rest of the Mediterranean countries..." Trump's association with Malta began in 1954, when he formed part of a team excavating Gozo's Ggantija Temples. Subsequently curator of the National Museum of Archaeology, he went on to exca- vate numerous other sites, of which the Skorba temples near Mgarr (Malta), and the Brocktorff Circle in Xaghra, are the best known. It was Trump who replaced the earlier, cumbersome labels for pre- historic phases with a more com- prehensible, representative nomen- clature based on place-names – the Ghar Dalam phase, Grey Skorba phase, etc. – which is in use today. "He also divided Maltese prehis- tory into three main 'Periods' – Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age – instead of Evans' bipartite division; and for the first time, at- tached to each period and phase scientifically produced dates us- ing radiocarbon. This pushed back the earliest appearance of humans on the islands to shortly after 4,000 BC..." This date was later pushed back even further to 5,000 BC by means of another dating method adopted in the 1970s: tree-ring calibration. It was in part thanks to these ef- forts, too, that Malta's megalithic temples acquired their reputation as 'the oldest free-standing build- ings in the world'. "The latter calibration also made it possible to date the earliest mega- lithic temples, such as the Ggantija ones, to the Ggantija Phase (3600- 3000 BC)... that is, centuries before the first pyramid in Egypt." Bonanno also credits David Trump with placing Malta's prehis- toric legacy on the world archaeol- ogy map. "Trump was a skilled di- vulgator of knowledge, both in his frequent public lectures and in his writings, reaching out to a whole range of different audiences using everyday vocabulary instead of re- condite specialized jargon... such as in his Malta, an Archaeological Guide, published first in 1971. He published a surfeit of scientific pa- pers in academic journals, one of which refers for the first time to the 'architects' of the megalithic tem- ples." Beyond Malta, Dr Trump also made a valid contribution to Sar- dinian prehistory, introducing a new phase. "For many years when I used to teach General Prehistory to first year students, I followed and recommended the use of his book The Prehistory of the Mediterra- nean, an excellent overview of the subject up to the 1980s, encom- passing most of the prehistoric sites within 100 km from the shores of the Mediterranean..." For all this, his name remains more closely associated with Mal- ta's most enigmatic archaeological conundrum: the so-called 'cart- ruts', which all these millennia later continue to withhold their secrets. Trump himself often admitted to being mystified by the purpose and function of these curious grooves carved into the living rock. In one of his last local interviews, he con- fessed that: "Thinking about my experience of the Maltese cart ruts, the thing that strikes me most is that in these 57 years, I have added far more questions than answers." Among these unanswered ques- tions is their precise age. Bonanno admits that this critical knowledge has so far proved elusive. "Cart ruts, like many other rock- cut features which do not trap in- side them a sufficiently reliable stratigraphic sequence of archaeo- logical deposits, are very difficult to date. They constitute the only area where in the past David Trump and myself had divergent views: on the footsteps of Temi Zammit, Trump opted for a Bronze Age date. Along the years I came to realize that sta- tistically, the majority of cart ruts – both in Malta and elsewhere in the Mediterranean – were intimately associated with quarrying of the Classical age... which in Malta cor- responds to the Punic and Roman periods. We even have two instanc- es where cart-ruts cut through the floor of quarries of the Classical age, making it impossible for them to predate that period..." The two divergent viewpoints were never fully reconciled, though Trump would eventually revise his own opinion slightly. Prof. Bo- nanno recalls his last lecture on this subject at Din l-Art Helwa in December 2015. "I was happy to attend that lecture, in which he ex- tended the range of date for the cart ruts from the Borg in-Nadur phase (1500-900 BC) to the end of the Roman period (AD 535). In spite of this, I admit that there are still many unanswered, or unsatisfacto- rily answered questions..." But doesn't Trump's comment about 'unanswered questions' up to a point also apply to the study of archaeology as a whole? Wouldn't it be fair to say that the most we can hope to do is approximate the truth about the ancient world... without ever being certain? "My answer to that is 'no'; Trump's comment does not apply to archaeology in general. It applies more to certain areas of prehistory because, by their very nature, they have no written documentation to corroborate them. To answer ques- tions concerning religious beliefs and social relations, recourse must be made to anthropological analo- gies. In these grey areas, it is always a question of percentage of proba- bilities: one hypothetical view being more probable than another, unless there exists evidence that makes it possible to eliminate any of them completely... such as, for instance, extraterrestrial interventions..." Naturally, not everyone would be equally keen to eliminate outland- ish hypotheses such as alien origins for Malta's temple culture... indeed, the absence of conclusive answers has attracted any number of such theories. In 'Chariots of the Gods', for in- stance, author Erich Von Daniken argued that Malta's cart-ruts were actually ancient landing strips for extra-terrestrial spacecraft. Dani- ken also argued that the pyramids of Egypt were built by alien civili- sation, and that Biblical accounts such as the Creation myth were ancestral memories of early human encounters with extra-terrestrials. His work has since been thor- oughly debunked, but this hasn't stopped others from building on its foundations. More recently, a documentary made by Graham Hancock identified Malta's temple culture as the last vestiges of the lost continent of Atlantis... suggest- ing that other, as yet undiscovered temples lie on the seabed. Again, 'alien intervention' lies at the heart of this hypothesis. Hancock points towards the famous 'elongated skulls' unearthed from the Hypo- geum. Ignoring tests which have established they are fully human, he favours the view that they be- longed to a 'master race' from an- other world. Meanwhile, a cursory online search yields masses of sites dedi- cated to promulgating such fanci- ful theories. Just as the rest of the world is beset by 'fake news' and the so-called 'Post-truth' era, scientific and academic research must con- stantly contend with a global fac- tory of mass-produced conspiracy theories: distorting the available evidence in the process. Trump himself was critical of such 'pseudoscience', arguing that any theory should be backed by ar- chaeological and anthropological evidence. Does Prof Bonanno share his concern that such theories are undermining scientific efforts? "I do share David Trump's con- cern about some of these pseudo- scientific theories, especially when they denigrate and try to discredit Interview By Raphael Vassallo maltatoday, SATURDAY, 31 DECEMBER 2016 Where did the temple builders derive their profound and consummate knowledge of engineering manifested in their megalithic buildings? It has proved impossible to identify any outside source of inspiration for such knowledge I do share David Trump's concern about some of these pseudoscientific theories, especially when they denigrate and try to discredit archaeological professionalism and expertise UNANSWERED QUESTIONS PSEUDOSCIENCE Unearthing the mysteries