Nearly all that is left of a 2,000-year-old baby that was found in an ancient burial ground beneath a school in Rabat is a single tiny tooth.
Some of the human remains discovered in Rabat beneath St. Paul’s Missionary College
The sequence of catacombs were found while extending the playing fields at St. Paul’s Missionary College. They also contained ornate ceramics, the remains of “at least eight” ancient islanders, and new hints for learning more about Malta’s mysterious history.
For the past few weeks, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage has been excavating the tombs. Archaeologists and osteologists have even discovered complete adult and child skeletons from the Roman era, along with a sizable number of complete pottery urns and other delicate items that were interred with the dead at the time of their burial.
Some of the human remains unearthed beneath the St Paul’s Missionary College in Rabat [Credit: The Times of Malta]
“There are many ruins in the Rabat area. The Sunday Times of Malta quoted Anthony Pace, the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage, as saying, “These graves are the most recent discovery we have discovered, with some interesting contents.
Oh yes, the process is just getting started. Finding a location is indeed exciting, but so is, for example, studying skulls in a lab, according to Dr. Pace. There is no other way to describe some of the skeletons, he added, turning to face his colleague. He said, “We’re not nuts, we’re archeologists,” after pausing.
Children yesterday played football on a freshly paved field as they entered the grounds of the school in Rabat, with the schoolhouse towering behind them. Dr. Pace shows the way past some mesh-wire and plastic piping along a gravel walkway to the excavation work being done to extend the grounds.
Some of the human remains unearthed beneath the St Paul’s Missionary College in Rabat [Credit: The Times of Malta]
“First we discovered this chamber and then we found more and more,” he said, as the newly unearthed depths of the playing field’s boundary wall revealed hand-chiselled crypts.
Inside what looks like a small shelf carved out of the stone, about the size of an encyclopaedia, was one of several burial sites used for infants.
“2,000 years ago, child mortality rates were high. They would lay them to rest in these miniature tombs, plaster it shut and then open it and use the site for a fresh burial as soon as they could. This would often be done over and over,” said Bernardette Mercieca Spiteri, an anthropologist studying the remains.
Some of the decorative pottery found in Rabat
So who were these ancient people? Dr Pace shied away from calling them Maltese.
“‘Malteseness’ as we know it today is a relatively new invention. Malta would have been home to moving people from the Mediterranean, it would have also had settlers, and they would have considered themselves part of the empire, in this case, the Roman Empire,” he said.
It was nearly impossible, he added, to place a precise date on the burial sites, but the contents and the location indicated they were probably from a time when Malta was transitioning between Carthaginian colony to Roman – a time, he said, when a strong Jewish community was present on the island, along with merchants and colonial settlers.“These sites help us piece together that history, a time that we don’t know enough about,” Dr Pace said
Source: weird.bartasarakkhon.com
