Xagħra, Gozo, has just given Malta one of its rarest prehistoric finds. On Monday 24 August, the Planning Authority (PA) issued an Emergency Conservation Order for a site at Triq il-Ġdida in Pjazza Sant'Anton. Archaeologists there uncovered human remains, prehistoric pottery and intact vessels from the Żebbuġ Phase. That phase runs from about 4100 to 3800 BC and predates every megalithic temple on the islands. Evidence suggests the existence of a cemetery containing at least eight tombs.
This order was made at the request of the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage. Under Article 58 of the Development Planning Act, the Planning Authority granted it. For 12 months after its publication in the Government Gazette, the site now receives protection akin to Class A scheduling. Without the PA's consent and the Superintendence's advice, no one may dig, build, or intervene there.
This is exactly how the heritage system should work. A monitored excavation found something; the archaeologists reported it, and the state moved within days. The Superintendence itself described the discovery as an exceptional chance to learn how our earliest communities buried their dead. Gozitans will welcome the decision without a moment's reservation. Yet a walk of barely a kilometre across the same plateau leads to a very different story.
Ta' Lablab lies about 230 metres north of the Santa Verna temple. The FRAGSUS team excavated there in 2015 under Caroline Malone, Reuben Grima, Simon Stoddart and Nicholas Vella. This team, part of the FRAGSUS project (2013-2018), studied early human impact on prehistoric Maltese environments. The European Research Council is funding this project, called Fragility and Sustainability in Restricted Island Contexts. Their work proved continuous settlement from 5400 to 2400 BC. That makes the area 2,000 years older than Ġgantija and older than the site now under protection. The Maltese state recognised the area's value long ago. Joseph Attard Tabone reminds us that the government bought its first plot for archaeological preservation there in 1911. The buffer zone of 1998 stopped short of Ta' Lablab.
In May 2022 MALTA-ARCH reported construction on a fragile cave system a few metres from the temple. The Planning Authority halted those works the following June. Development resumed after a preliminary archaeological report in October 2023. That report, which Superintendence archaeologist Bernardette Mercieca-Spiteri wrote, describes a Temple-Period burial pit. Seven skulls lay in a row, some nested inside others, most of them children's. The same report concedes that machinery removed soil from the pit before anyone recognised a burial. In plain terms, a bulldozer went through a prehistoric grave.
Who raised the alarm about the bones at Ta' Lablab? A Xagħra resident, Carmen Bajada, walked past a half-bulldozed pit, saw bones and called the police and the Superintendence. Only after her call did anyone formally record the remains. At a PA hearing in August 2025, Dr Dawn Saliba of MALTA-ARCH cited unreported bones and a report that followed Flimkien għal Ambjent Ahjar (FAA) press release, with a request to backdate it. She also cited bulldozing beyond the permitted area. Superintendence official Kevin Borda had flagged that last breach himself.
The applications carry permit numbers rather than household names. PA 5171/23 proposes eleven houses with jacuzzis beside the buffer zone. The applicant is Thomas Grech, a manager at PRA Construction. That company belongs to Joseph Portelli and two Gozitan partners. PA 3174/23 proposes seven houses beside the burial pit itself. The board suspended both for six months in August 2025 pending superintendence analysis. On the eve of that hearing, machines cleared soil on the 5171 site despite the suspension. The PA described that clearance as work for archaeological study. Any archaeologist will tell you that mechanical clearance destroys the stratigraphy on which the study depends. Six months have long passed, and I cannot establish where either application now stands.
Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar welcomed the Sant'Anton order this week and then asked the obvious question. Why does one Żebbuġ-phase cemetery receive emergency protection while an older burial pit meets the bulldozer? The same two authorities presided over both, and the FAA rates the older pit of potential global importance. The FAA calls the contrast a stark inconsistency within the PA and the Superintendence. I would put the point rather more simply than that. Whether a find survives in Gozo depends on who is watching, not on the law.
Will the pattern extend well beyond Ta' Lablab and its seven skulls? Dr Saliba reported in July that a 22-apartment block, Ġgantija Heights, sits within the temple's buffer zone to the east. The Gozo Regional Council warned that it will cause permanent harm. Developers propose a 27-apartment complex with an underground garage to the west, steps from the Xagħra Circle. That circle is the only stone-enclosed hypogeum in Europe. Every unrecorded grave that gives way to a jacuzzi tears a page from that story.
Two questions now sit on the Minister for Gozo's desk, and on the Superintendent's. First, what differed between Triq il-Ġdida and Ta' Lablab? Did the state learn from its embarrassment on the Santa Verna plateau, or did this developer simply carry less weight? I do not claim to know the answer. I do know that the public deserves one, in writing, with the two files side by side. Second, why does the Superintendence still rely on monitors whom the applicant pays and who then police that applicant? A resident with a mobile phone did the monitor's job at Ta' Lablab. That is not a system; it is luck.
The plateau also demands a wider remedy. The FRAGSUS findings show near-continuous Neolithic occupation from Ġgantija to Santa Verna. Every permit on that ground stands a fair chance of hitting a grave. Emergency orders that arrive one site at a time, after the bulldozer, cannot protect a landscape. We should halt new excavations on the plateau until we complete a comprehensive archaeological survey. Over 800 people have signed a parliamentary petition asking for exactly that protection. Former Labour MP Katya De Giovanni, Arnold Cassola, Sandra Gauci and Luke Said have all backed it. Parliament reconvenes shortly and could start the term by answering them.
Xagħra's dead have waited 6,000 years for someone to find them. Those still alive can certainly wait to survey before pouring more concrete.