A Neolithic palaeo-catena for the Xagħra Upper Coralline Limestone plateau of Gozo, Malta, and its implications for past soil development and land use

Abstract

Geoarchaeological survey on the island of Gozo combined with test excavations and new chronometric radiocarbon and OSL dating of two Neolithic temple sites at Santa Verna and Ġgantija on the Xagħra plateau have revealed well preserved buried soils which tell a new story of soil development and change for the early-mid-Holocene period. Micromorphological analysis has suggested that the earlier Neolithic climax soil type was a thick, well-developed, humic and clay-enriched argillic brown Mediterranean soil. With human intervention on the Xagħra Upper Coralline Llimestone mesa plateau currently occupied by the town of Xagħra from at least the early 4th millennium BC, the trajectory of soil development quickly changed. This Rradical soil change was marked by the removal of scrub woodland, then consequent poorer organic status and soil thinning, and rubefication and calcification and rubefication, no doubt exacerbated by Neolithic agricultural activities the uptake of land for arable use and a more general longer-term aridification trend. The beginnings of this transitional brown to red Mediterranean transitional process of soil change process has been observed at Santa Verna temple by the early 4th millennium BC, and appears to beis much further advanced by the time of the latter use of Ġgantija temple was built in the early-mid-3rd millennium BC. There is also evidence of attempts at amending these deteriorating soils at Ġgantija during this period and into the 2nd millennium BC, a practice which. probably underpinned the viability of later Neolithic agricultural society in the Maltese Islands. These changes observed ultimately resulted in the creation of the thin, xeric, to red Mediterranean soils on the Coralline Llimestone mesa plateaux whichthat are typical of much of Gozo and Malta today.