The Earliest Human Presence on Malta: Views from the Latnija Cave (Mellieħa)

Speakers: Prof. Eleanor Scerri & Prof. Nicholas Vella (University of Malta)
Language: English

About the Lecture:

Last April, the announcement of the results of archaeological excavations at the Latnija Cave received acclaim for rewriting the narrative about the earliest human presence on Malta. This lecture will consider the evidence uncovered by an international team of archaeologists working at Latnija since 2019, drawing on a suite of scientific analyses to identify the nature and extent of human activity in the cave. The findings shed light on the challenges and opportunities of small-island settlement in the Mesolithic and the ramifications of some of the longest sea crossings in the Mediterranean during this period.

About the Speakers:

Prof. Eleanor Scerri is an archaeological scientist based at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Germany, where she is the head of the Human Palaeosystems Research Group. Her research seeks to uncover the nature of the origin of our species, our global spread, and our interactions with the environment – with the implications for present day challenges. To do this she combines archaeology with climate science, genetics and computational methods. She has authored over 75 publications on this subject including in the top scientific journals in the world. In doing so, she has achieved global prominence for formulating the dominant models of recent human evolution and driving key breakthroughs in palaeoanthropology. Most recently, she is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council funded ‘IslandLab’ project, a 1.5 million euro project which is re-writing the prehistory of the Maltese Islands and more broadly, the entire Mediterranean region. She has held positions at the University of Bordeaux and the University of Oxford before joining the Max Planck Society.

Nicholas Vella is Professor in the Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Malta, which he joined in 1999. He writes on Mediterranean history and archaeology, with a focus on the ancient Phoenicians and the history of archaeological thought and practice. He has co-directed numerous excavations on multi-period sites in the Maltese Islands as part of research-led fieldwork teaching and training for students. He is Co-Investigator of the ‘IslandLab’ project for which he co-directs the fieldwork at Latnija. He has been Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome, Getty Villa Scholar in Los Angeles, and Research Associate at the American University of Beirut. He has led the Department of Classics and Archaeology (2011/19) and the University of Malta’s Doctoral School (2017/25).

Kindly RSVP by emailing ou******@na******.org. Following the lecture, we warmly invite you to the courtyard to enjoy some light refreshments.

This lecture is kindly supported by The Alfred Mizzi Foundation.