Heritage Malta is organising a public lecture entitled “Wine pressing and a possible Maltese colony in Calabria”. The lecture, which forms part of Heritage Malta’s series of public lectures, will be delivered by Professor Anthony Bonanno from the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta. The lecture, which will be in English, will be delivered on Tuesday 29 January at 6.30pm at the Heritage Malta’s Head Office in Merchants Street, Valletta. Entrance is free of charge.

Professor Bonanno, a member of the Board of Directors of Heritage Malta, will take up the cue from some “mysterious” rock-cut features of which there is a concentration on either side of the Mgarr ix-Xini valley which had been examined some time ago by Dr Carol Jaccarini and Prof Maurice Cauchi who published their study in Melita Historica in 1999. The two authors called them “rock-cut pans” and suggested a number of possible interpretations.

A recent publication by Orlando Sculli of similar features in the vicinity of Brancaleone in Calabria suggests that they could be “palmenti”, rock cut wine-pressing devices which abound in this area.

The antiquity of these formations has been traced back to at least the Byzantine era. Similar rock cut features have been in use for that purpose up to the mid-20th century. A conference on these “palmenti” was held in Ferruzzano in Calabria in August 2007, to which Professor Bonanno was invited.

During this conference Professor Bonanno was informed of a widely diffused “tradition” of an old Maltese “colony” in the area, and hence he will elaborate on this possible Maltese connection.