It must have been three or so years ago, in late October.
I, along with a group of interested persons, climbed the Nuffara hill in Gozo, across the valley from Xaghra, led by an agile and nimble, for his age, guide, David Trump.
Professor Trump who was a giant in Maltese archaeology, died last week aged 85, a few days after his birthday.
Others may perhaps give a more rounded appreciation of his life and work. He had a particular interest in the archaeology of the Mediterranean – that of Sardinia, of Sicily and mainly of Malta. Between 1958 and 1963, he was curator of the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta.
He developed a programme of archaeological excavations including the first excavations of the Skorba site.
Prof. Trump was the first archaeologist to use the carbon-14 dating in Malta which led to his discovery of two new phases in Maltese prehistory, and are now described as the Skorba red and grey phases.
And yet, as we climbed and slithered up the last steep bit of the Nuffara, rendered slippery by the previous days’ rain, we could not but be amazed at how lightly Prof. Trump handled his knowledge.
Nuffara, he told us, must have been a Bronze Age settlement, and up there we could understand this was a very good site. You can see all around you and the site is extremely well defended by nature.
Yet, he corrected us, the Bronze Age people are not known to have had enemies, so why then did they live up there where they had to walk down to their fields every day and, after a day’s work, climb up the hill to their homes?
He led us round the top of the hill, which, like other hills in Gozo, is amazingly flat on top. From up there we could see Xaghra across the valley, overlook the racecourse at Tax-Xhajma, and contemplate the Gozitan countryside in the autumn sun.
Towards the end of our tour, as we came round the southern-western corner, he showed us some holes in the ground and then, to our total amazement, nimbly jumped into one of them to show the practical use they had as storage vats.
Then he pointed out that the earth around us was full of ceramic ochre-coloured bits which most probably came from Bronze Age pottery ware.
That was not the only time I had listened to a David Trump lecture and each one was a real experience in itself.
He lectured in the tradition of an English Don, which he was at Cambridge, exuding knowledge but not showing off.
In April 2008, I had written: “Skorba is accepted by all as one of the most important archaeological sites in the Maltese Islands.
“Excavations led by David Trump in the 1960s unearthed remains from all the known phases of Maltese pre-history – from the Ghar Dalam era (5000 to 4300BC) to the phase now known as the Skorba phase (4500 to 4100BC), to the temple period (3600 to 2500BC).
“However, enclosed behind a flimsy wire-netting fence is not only just a part of the actual Skorba area but also the less important part. The more important part lies outside the wire netting and is in private hands.
“The government has known about this for decades and the proposal that the government buys or expropriates the land has been wandering around in government corridors in the Lands Department and elsewhere for years.
“In addition, one of the farmers who owns the land actually wants to give the land to the government.
And yet, up until now, the land remains outside the fence and at the mercy of everyone.”
On 8 June 2014, I wrote a long report about a talk given by Prof. Trump at the National Museum of Archaeology entitled, with some prescience, “60 years of archaeology in Malta” (https://www.pressreader.com/malta/malta-independent/20140608/281681137939519)
He ended his talk by saying “I have not finished yet – I will carry on for as long as I can” although he quickly added he did not want to repeat what a Dr Myers was reported to have said in the 1820s – “Now in my second 100 years…”
He then recounted how he had first come to Malta to help in a dig at Easter time and spent £26 to come to Malta and return home, and how, in 1958 he had come to Malta to spend five years as the Curator of the National Museum of Archaeology.
He found love in between his digs in Malta but his most interesting find was between Rabat and Munxar in Gozo, where, digging in a burnt-out cave, he first found a golden bracelet from Roman times and – even more important – a half-burnt bread roll. Archaeologically speaking, the bread roll was even more important than the golden bracelet and the only such find this side of Paestum.
David Trump was like that: for 22 years, each summer he guided a group of amateur archaeologists on digs around the Mediterranean, including Malta.
He was like that: in that lecture he came up with the idea of studying the DNA from some of the human remains from Bronze Age times and comparing it with DNA from today’s Maltese to establish if there was a link between the temple builders and today’s Maltese.
As far as I know, this has not been attempted so far. This, along with the still unpreserved Skorba, is destined to be David Trump’s real legacy to Malta.
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