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Rediscovering Thomas Ashby ( F , 1887-93 ) in Malta
Dr SKF Stoddart ( F , 71-76 ) writes :
One of the distinctive , but not always remembered , features of a Wykehamical education is its long-standing impact on the world of archaeology , particularly in the Mediterranean . The influence started early and derived from the Classical Education of pupils at the School . Francis Cranmer Penrose ( 1817-1903 ), David George Hogarth ( 1862-1927 ), Sir John Linton Myres ( 1869-1954 ) and John Devitt Stringfellow Pendlebury ( 1904-41 ) were some of the leading figures in the study of Greek civilisation . An equally powerful genealogy leads from Francis Haverfield ( 1860-1919 ) through Thomas Ashby ( 1874-1931 ) to John Ward-Perkins ( 1912- 81 ), investigating the world of early Italy .
These last two figures were some of the most important directors , in the last century , of the British School at Rome , a research institution that still leads and coordinates British fine-art practice and humanities research in Italy . This pair of scholars initiated a tradition of landscape archaeology that has become a hallmark of British Archaeology at an international level . In part , this was a pragmatic response to the fact that British archaeologists were not granted Italian permits to excavate in the first half of the 20th century . It may also be significant that walking fields in search of ancient artefacts is substantially cheaper than excavation . In addition , the trend was drawn from a deeply embedded British tradition of appreciating landscape , enshrined in Morning Hills , which had been started in 1884 by Fearon , some three years before Ashby entered Southgate House ( the current Chawker ’ s ). Walking remained Ashby ’ s main relaxation throughout his life .
Thomas Ashby also followed another practical route by undertaking excavation in the nearest British colony , Malta , where permits could be freely granted . His friendship with Themistocles Zammit , the father of Maltese archaeology , in the period prior to the First World War , is one of the most important intellectual collaborations in the history of archaeology . The practical science of Dr . Zammit was combined with the excavation experience and historical knowledge of Ashby , drawn from his fellow Wykehamist and Oxford graduates John Myres and Francis Haverfield , to produce an ideal partnership on the Maltese islands . This partnership laid the foundations for our knowledge of Maltese archaeology , preserving a record that might otherwise have been lost .
Ashby was not content with the relatively unassuming classical archaeology on the Maltese islands , at least compared with his base in Rome , even though he excavated one important Roman villa and provided a first synthesis of the then-available evidence . Guided by Zammit , Ashby was drawn to what is now known to be the earliest European Architecture , dating to the fourth millennium BC through calibrated radiocarbon dating . His excavations of the ‘ temples ’ of a Hagar Qim , Kordin ( 1908-9 ) and Santa Verna ( 1911 ) were the first systematic stratigraphic excavations of what are now recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites . It was this collaboration that led Zammit to apply a developed excavation strategy to the later excavations of Tarxien during the First World War , leading to the recovery of some of the most perfectly preserved prehistoric ritual on the Maltese islands .
Our current project , once again an Anglo-Maltese collaboration with a Wykehamist involvement , has followed in Ashby ’ s footsteps , most notably at Santa Verna and Kordin . At Santa Verna , although Ashby was himself struck with dysentery , his team opened up a large area of the site , revealing floors and substantial megalithic structures , collecting a number of distinctive sea-shell figurines in baked clay , as well as a wealth of fine pottery and stone artefacts . He also identified the presence of a later graveyard on the site that gave the megalithic structure its Christianised name .
At Santa Verna in 2015 , we have recovered the location of his very trenches and confirmed the accuracy of his methods . In the same way as his approach was a step ahead of all that preceded , we like to think that our work has also added new scientific insights . Most notably we have shown that this site is indeed another ‘ temple ’ monument , both by better definition of its plan and by discovery of more liturgical artefacts in the form of baked clay sea-shell figurines . Indeed , this ‘ temple ’ seems to have been of the same scale and orientation as the more famous gantija monument on the same plateau , where we also undertook fieldwork , and where the newly opened visitor centre records our work on the contemporary cemetery in the late 1980s and early 1990s . We have also demonstrated that this same site of Santa Verna dates back to the very earliest occupation of the Maltese islands in the sixth millennium BC , when fertile humic soils and heavier vegetation cover were still in existence . Indeed these impressive monuments , as large as small modern churches , seem to have emerged from prosperous settlements located preferentially close to water and the better soils , within the arid landscape of the islands .
The current project also draws on Ashby ’ s contribution by examining the landscape . The detection of environmental indicators , such as ancient
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