Malta’s Underwater Heritage

Tartana di Malta. Courtesy The Malta Maritime Museum.

Recent intensive remote sensing surveys of the seabed continue to expand knowledge about the underwater cultural heritage of the Maltese Islands. The primary objective of these surveys is to map Malta’s underwater cultural assets so that they may be protected and managed according to local law and international conventions. However, these surveys also offer intriguing glimpses of the islands’ maritime past. These will be discussed, by Dr Timothy Gambin, in a talk entitled: Shipwrecks from Malta’s recent past and what these tell us. The period covered is historically very well documented. Numerous aspects of the Knights and British periods have been studied, published and debated. Historical archaeology, on the other hand, remains relatively unexplored. Results from these surveys provide a novel perspective for the study of trade and exchange in objects that formed an integral part of social life during these centuries.

This presentation, supported by APS Bank, is the first in The Archaeological Society’s programme for the new season and will be held at 6pm on Wednesday, 18 October 2017 at the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, 173, St Christopher Street, Valletta.

Photo: Tartana di Malta. Courtesy the Malta Maritime Museum.