Residents praised for protecting Mtarfa archaeological site

Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando yesterday urged the authorities to tread carefully if further development was considered in the Mtarfa area, which, he said, was rich in Bronze Age, Punic and Roman remains.

Speaking in Parliament during the adjournment, Dr Pullicino Orlando referred to the concerns raised by some Mtarfa residents that a housing project in their locality might not be fully taking the historical importance of the site into account.

Dr Pullicino said he had noted with satisfaction that, on the insistence of Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and Mepa, excavations had been stopped and plans had been adjusted so that a funerary site on the extreme western end of the building area had been excluded from the development.

He said the residents had expressed particular concern over the central part of the site, which was characterised by an access hole into a cave that seemed to have been a central funerary chamber surrounded by rock cut tombs. This site had already been disturbed when a wartime shelter was dug.

A report commissioned by the Superintendence had described the cave and the features within it as being significant archaeological items that warranted protection and preservation. Dr Pullicino Orlando said he had read archaeological reports describing this area in detail, particularly those by Caruana (1898) and Trump (1972). Both pointed out the archaeological value of Mtarfa ridge, with Prof. Trump going so far as to describe it as being "a city of the dead".

Dr Pullicino thanked Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina, Marisa Micallef, chairman of the Housing Authority, Nathaniel Cutajar, curator at the Archaeology Museum, the Office of the Prime Minister and Mepa for their interest and congratulated the residents who showed an interest in this matter, adding that without their sense of civic responsibility an archaeological site of considerable value might have been destroyed.