Archeological Knowledge of Cisterns and Water Management in Malta

Abstract
Water is a vital resource for life to survive in all environments. The Maltese have been struggling with the lack of water as far back as 3000 BC. My research analyzes how the Island of Malta has handled the water crisis throughout many centuries and continues to handle it today. Through analysis of research in books by Garry Hogg, Quentin Hughes, and a few others, I have found that Malta designed its water management system around the uses of cisterns throughout local communities and large temples. These cisterns primarily were designed as water tanks to become the primary source of fresh water during the dry summer months and were replenished with fresh water during the rainy season. Malta’s terrain is very rocky and largely composed of limestone. This prevents the absorption of rainfall leading to the majority of this water escaping as run-off to the Mediterranean Sea. With the construction of the Wignacourt Aqueduct during the 16th century which transported fresh water from Mdina to Valleta, the new capital city of Malta, water resources became more accessible allowing for agriculture to advance beyond what it was previously capable of. The cisterns were used for many centuries as the main source of storage of fresh water. Even today, thousand year old cisterns are still used for irrigation and plumbing (usually not drinking due to bacteria). As technology advanced in the 19th century, the Maltese now use desalination methods to support the countries need for fresh water. Desalination methods account for about 50% of the fresh water in Malta. This project dives deeper into the analysis of how the water crisis in Malta has impact the culture and the development of water storage methods from 3000 BC till now.

Malta Research Progress Report #1 - Billy McVicker: Malta's Cisterns & Water Management

Since I am an ICEX student, my country-based research project is focused on Malta and more specifically focused on the Archaeological Knowledge about Cisterns and Water Management. My research started out online reading through papers that I found on Google Scholar about water management and irrigation techniques in Malta. Most of these papers were about current events in the last 100 years and only a very brief sentence or two about the history of the water crisis. A reference in one of the papers led to me to library to skim through the book The Building of Malta 1530-1795 by Quentin Hughes. This book covers the architecture of Malta and the history of how the country was built. It also contains some history about cisterns. There were other books that I stumbled across that contained more information about the cisterns and other means of water management in Malta during the early development of the country. (Refer to the references of the names and authors of these books). I would definitely recommend my ICEX peers to check these books out due to the extensive knowledge in all areas about Malta. It was however difficult to find extensive research on cisterns and the development of them. Most of the books and essays that I read just mentioned that they were used and also mentioned the popular ones that were discovered.

A little history on Malta’s water crisis starts as far back as history records human activity on the island. This is estimated to be around 3,000 BC. I found that recordings state that Malta had a higher percentage of fresh water during this time, but about this time is when the supply of fresh water began to disintegrate due to the habitation of humans. Basically, humans began to remove vegetation in order to build communities. This change in terrain slowly caused the movement of soil during the rainy season, which is from August till March, creating a rockier landscape. With a rockier terrain, water was not easily absorbed by the earth and resulted in run-offs into the ocean versus absorption of the fresh water in the earth to fill up springs and natural underwater wells. It was about this time that the Maltese began to collect water through cisterns or tanks.

One of the popular discoveries of water supplies was the Misqa Tanks. These tanks were found to be about 200 meters inland from the Mnajdra temples. In the book The Building of Malta 1530-1795 by Quentin Hughes, it states that these tanks are a system of dug out water cisterns used to capture rainwater and transport it underground to the Mnajdra temples by solely using gravity. It is unknown when these cisterns were built because their construction is unlike other cisterns that fall in the categories Bronze Age, Roman, medieval, or modern. These tanks were designed to fill quickly by surface run-off during the raining season (Trump 1972).

Other cisterns have been found on the island of Malta and are described to be bell-shaped. Specifically, a series of cisterns in Luqu village were found and measured up to 3.4 meters in diameter and 4 meters deep. Two of the series of cisterns found contained Bronze Age pottery and Malta’s prehistoric vegetation (Trump 1972). Another example of how cisterns were used to manage the water crisis was a discovery of tanks that were found in the basement of houses. Each of these houses had a special channel that directed water from the roof to an underground cistern (Hughes 1956).

References

D. H. Trump (1972). Malta: An Archaeological Guide (Archaeological Guides).
     London: Faber and Faber
Hughes J. Quentin (1956). The building of Malta during the period of the
     knights of St. John of Jerusalem 1530-1795. London: Alec Tiranti Ltd.