The megalithic temples are the pinnacles of the Maltese tourism
product – yet a current visit can turn out to be a non-experience which does not reveal any of their secrets. All this is about to change soon, says Heritage Malta’s World Heritage Sites curator Reuben Grima and his colleague Katya Stroud. They talk to Sandra Aquilina about a project which will seek to conserve the stone remains and make them come alive to visitors
“Inside closed eyes… close the eyes once more, then even the stones will come alive” – From Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire
The ruins stand close to the cliff edge, in one of Malta’s windiest, most exposed and most beautiful locations. Walking up to the temple ruins, one senses the reasons why our ancestors, thousands of years ago, chose this spot to build these magnificent structures. The ruins merge peacefully with the barren and isolated landscape on which they have stood for longer than any other structure. The sea pounds below and Filfla is clearly visible from the edge. There is a sense of timelessness about the whole scene – the same alignment has endured for far longer than human memory can reach back.
What would the temple stones tell us if they could speak? What would they reveal about our ancestors’ lives and our relation to them? What resonance do these ancient buildings have to the lives of modern man – who can still feel the aura of the ruins and the landscape on which they stand?
“The temple ruins relate narratives which are relevant to the people who inhabit the same landscape today,” explains World Heritage Sites curator Reuben Grima. “Simply by looking at how the constraints and opportunities defined by the landscape contributed to the culture that prehistoric people developed – that relationship has a resonance with the people who manage that landscape today. We’re occupying the same space.
“In fact the archaeological record, the material remains, is today a part of that material landscape, so in a sense constructing the stories of the past is explaining our material surroundings today.”
Unfortunately, although the temples are the pinnacles of the Maltese tourism product, visiting the sites at the moment will not necessarily open up their secrets. The temples have no information desk, no audio guides, no organised tours, no copies of the artifacts discovered there to aid the imagination, no website – they remain a pile of mysterious stones, stubbornly silent. Their stories whisper in the wind, but do not speak to the visitors wandering among the stones. All this, however, might finally be about to change, says Mr Grima.
“Historically, interpretation of these sites has been chronically under-resourced,” he admits. “It’s only in the last decade that the scene has begun to improve.”
A European Regional Development Fund project for the conservation and presentation of the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra Archaeological Park is presently being implemented by Heritage Malta. The greater part of the e3.5 million cost (excluding VAT) – 63 per cent – will be funded by European funds – while the rest will be funded by the Maltese government.
“The goal of the project is on the one hand the conservation of these sites and on the other their better interpretation – which will include a new visitors’ centre,” Mr Grima explains.
Making the temples’ stories more accessible – the interpretation dimension
“Weave, weaver of the wind”– Ulysses, by James Joyce
“The proposed visitors’ centre will be the visitors’ launching pad to the sites and to the landscape of which they form a part,” said Mr Grima.
“It will be a building on two levels which will be wrapped into the existing carpark, which has a capacity in excess of the carrying capacity of the archaeological park. In addition, the proposed centre will be fitted into an area of which the surface has already been degraded, containing the impact.
“It will provide basic amenities which are now sadly lacking: better cloakrooms, a small cafeteria and a souvenir and book shop. It will also help visitors get basic orientation around the site, apart from improved security arrangements, accommodation space for staff and so on. That is one half of its role – the other half is interpretation proper. It will serve as a preparation for visitors, explaining the cultural and natural resources that one is about to encounter, to maximise the experience.”
At present, ideas being discussed for the interpretation dimension include audiovisual presentations and an exhibition, which will be housed in an exhibition space with visual access to Hagar Qim and the landscape, providing a link between the two.
The exhibition is currently in the brainstorm stage, explained Hagar Qim Collection and Site executive Katya Stroud. “We started off by discussing what the messages are that we want to communicate, such as the importance of the link between culture and landscape. Apart from the temples, there are also other historical features such as it-Torri tal-Hamrija and the Congreve memorial, so we want to communicate this relationship between landscape and the history of Malta. This is just one example – we chose various subjects; then we started choosing different media to communicate these topics.”
Artifacts included in the exhibition will be selected according to the narratives related, Mr Grima added. It has not yet been decided whether the originals or copies will be exhibited, the deciding factor being the guarantee of their conservation, he said. He did, however, add that since many are quite robust, the originals might well be included.
“We would also like the display to be more interactive,” he said. “For instance, part of the story will be how the natural landscape influenced cultural decisions. Even at the time when they built the temples, they used the same materials we use today and they developed different technologies to work with different materials. Visitors could take stone samples in their hands and try to scratch their surfaces, noticing that it is possible with some but not others. It gives an impression which cannot be effectively communicated in words – we believe that the public presentation of Maltese prehistory and archaeology must embrace direct tactile experience more than it has done so far.”
Additional interpretation elements will be the recently-installed panels at Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. “They are just a first trial with an expected lifetime of a couple of years – they will eventually be replaced with more permanent and durable signage, incorporating the lessons learnt from this experiment.”
‘Dust falls from us daily’ – the conservation dimension
“Dust falls from us daily as we walk, dust of us, lives a little in the air and is trodden – we sweep away – parts of ourselves – O we die daily –“ (Possession, by A.S. Byatt)
“The debate on the conservation of the megalithic temples is an old one. People have been aware that the sites are threatened since at least the 19th century but increasingly during the course of the 20th century,” said Mr Grima.
“In 2000, a Scientific Committee for the Conservation of the Megalithic Temples was set up and began studying the threats with a view to recommending solutions to government. After careful consideration, one of the recommendations was that the most prudent and most urgently-required intervention to mitigate the problem was the installation of temporary protective shelters, while research on other treatments and solutions continues.
“Direct material intervention on the structure itself may often be much more risky because if the wrong action is taken, it will be very difficult to correct. Further research is required to define safe and reliable methods of preserving these structures without the need for protective shelters. In the case of the shelters, the worst-case scenario is that if their performance is not satisfactory, and if the protection they provide does not justify the visual intrusion, they can – quite literally – be wrapped up and removed.
“In order to better understand the processes that are damaging the prehistoric structures, a project for the intensive environmental monitoring of the sites has been launched. This project, which will cost e159,000, is being fully funded out of European Pre-Accession Funds. Thanks to these funds, it has been possible to secure the services of a renowned research institution to carry out this monitoring programme, namely the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), which forms part of Italy’s National Research Council (CNR). The information that is being gathered in this project will help define the conservation needs of the site and the detailed design of the protective shelters, and eventually will also help in the assessment of the shelters’ performance.
“Meanwhile, the difficult process of identifying methods for the direct conservation treatment of the materials and structure of the buildings themselves is being pursued by a team of experts who form part of the current Scientific Committee for the Conservation of the Megalithic Temples, appointed in 2004. Because of the delicacy and the extent of the interventions, the full implementation of the results of this work is expected to take several decades. The protective shelters will help slow down the rate of damage during this period,” said Mr Grima.
One of the fundamental problems with the structures, he explained, is that during the 100-odd years during which these sites have been exposed, there has been a very rapid deterioration. The temples had previously lain buried for thousands of years, which protected them from the harsh environmental conditions.
“One of the structures’ characteristics is that they have an inner and outer shell, a double wall. The space between the walls was originally full of stones and soil. Originally, they were probably covered and sealed and regular maintenance was carried out on them because they were buildings in use. All this was stripped off by time, and dust started seeping out. Every time it rains, its seeps out between the stones, like a rubble wall. So before, you had this compact soil which was distributing weight from one to stone to another, tying everything together compactly and strongly. With the loss of the soil infill, however, what we are left with is a balancing act of megaliths and boulders. New forces have been created in places where there weren’t any before, because the stones started to rest in new ways; increased weight on stone can accelerate its deterioration, so a vicious cycle is created and the more weight the stone bears, the bigger the stresses grow and move in directions that are unpredictable. This – one of the least visible problems – is one of the main ones. From the outside it might just seem like some dust falling – but it is a symptom of this internal structural problem. Another difficulty is that if these voids were to be refilled – in a load-bearing manner – the newly introduced materials would be practically impossible to remove,” said Mr Grima.
So, he added, the shelters – acting as a “life support system” – will buy some more time for the temples. They are not a final solution, “but a necessary intermediate one”, he said.
The shelters have a 30-year lifespan, said Mr Grima, so inevitably there will come a time for reconsideration. They will not interfere with the structures’ axis and will allow some filtered daylight through, he said.
The design of the visitor centre, interpretation facilities and the shelters was part of an international competition launched by the Youth Ministry in 2003. The winner, Swiss architect Walter Hunziker, has now been commissioned by the Tourism Ministry as the architect for the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra Project and is working in collaboration with local partnership aoM.
Although very aware that the structures would detract from the temples’ visual beauty, Mr Grima added: “It’s not an easy decision. Put simply, the choice is between enjoying Hagar Qim and Mnajdra without the shelters – and I would much rather see them without the shelters myself – for the next few decades, but see them regularly suffer serious and traumatic collapses, each of which will have an impact on the authenticity of the site, or living with these protective measures and successfully passing on this heritage intact for the enjoyment of future generations.”
There were serious collapses at Mnajdra in 1994 and at Hagar Qim in 1998, he said. On average, a collapse can be expected every two years, he said, adding that: “Every time there is a collapse, the damage is not completely reversible.”
He added that, at present, the state of documentation of the sites is still very fragmentary – based on simple plan drawings and photographic snapshots. “In the case of a collapse, it’s very difficult to know precisely – to the nearest centimetre – where exactly the elements were positioned.”
This problem is currently being addressed, he said, with a comprehensive three-dimensional document which is being prepared for the principal temples. “One such three-dimensional model has just been completed for Ggantija, thanks to European Solidarity Funds secured by the Gozo Ministry. Such a model allows you to go to any angle and generate images of what there is in that position. By the end of the year we should have a similar document for Hagar Qim and Mnajdra. We have just opened the tenders and we’re considering four bids,” he said.”
Stonehenge
When asked why protective shelters have not been used more widely on important archaeological sites elsewhere, such as Stonehenge, Mr Grima explained that the situation of other sites abroad is not necessarily comparable to the Maltese structures. “Stonehenge, for instance, is composed of a series of monolithic elements – not a closed structure with earth fill within stone walls. As you do not have this problem of the soil washing out from the standing part, the nature of the threat is different. The materials are also different; they are generally more durable than globigerina limestone. Another important difference is that Stonehenge has been largely exposed throughout most of its existence. It was never buried to the extent of these sites. In fact some of the elements in the softer stone employed on that site were eroded down to the ground centuries ago – so the site has now reached a natural equilibrium. In the case of the Maltese temples, because the sites were buried until a century ago on average – which in the lifetime of these buildings is the blink of an eye – we have seen this rapid change since their exposure because the state of preservation is so extraordinary that we have elements which do not survive for millennia in exposed conditions. At Stonehenge, what survives above ground now is relatively much more stable and is deteriorating at a much slower rate, despite the British climate.”
So the Maltese temples are more delicate, more vulnerable, said Mr Grima. “Miraculously, because the sites were left buried, somehow we have sculptures in limestone which are 5,000 years old. Given these differences in circumstances, the response has to be different,” he added.
The project
The project is currently at the public consultation stage. Two tenders – for project management and for the documentation of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra have been issued – and a tender for security and lighting will be issued shortly. A Project Description Statement was submitted to Mepa last December and is currently available on the Hagar Qim page of the Heritage Malta website.
The project should be completed by 2008, with the visitor centre building completed in 2007 and the protective shelters in place by the start of the rainy season in autumn 2007, unless there are delays in obtaining full planning permission.
Mr Grima urged for the start of an intelligent debate on the matter, adding that discussions were being held with all stakeholders.
Other temples
“Six examples of the buildings which we call temples – we do not fully understand their purpose – are all inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As they are inscribed as a series, the management plan which we need to develop has to be a coherent one for all the sites. Clearly we cannot develop one site and neglect the others,” said Mr Grima.
He added that work was being carried out to make Ta’ Hagrat and Skorba more accessible. Until recently, these were only accessible to visitors by appointment. Now they have just been reopened to the public every Tuesday morning.
Government has allocated a capital sum of Lm100,000 to start the drafting of a project for Ggantija, said Mr Grima. “Together with our colleagues in Gozo, we have already developed an action plan; starting with the basics, such as better cloakrooms not so close to the site, a better welcome and entrance point, a souvenir shop. A brochure is also being designed and there will be an audio introduction. In addition, a substantial grant from an international foundation which will be announced soon will also be donated – over and above the capital funds.”
Plans also include improved walkways with a viewing platform to minimise impact and crowding within the site as well as better interpretation. “One experiment we’d like to try out is hand-held palm-top computers in which people on site will be able to share their experience with people on the web. Also, one of the goals of this foundation is to make the sites more accessible to people with a disability.”
Work has also started on an audio guide for the hypogeum, said Mr Grima, making the tour available in a greater number of languages. There is also the BOV-Tarxien project which is at design stage, he said.
For more information about the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra project, please consult the Project Description Statement which is available online at www.heritagemalta.org/hagarqim.html. Comments and feedback may be sent by email to [email protected] or by calling tel: 2123-1236