Chiefdom Societies in Prehistoric Malta‪?‬

As is well known, years ago C. Renfrew adopted the social model of chiefdom to explain the emergence of outstanding megalithic centres in the Maltese archipelago in the mid-4th millennium BC. This represented a pioneering attempt to apply to a Prehistoric Mediterranean context the model, advanced by Neoevolutionary American anthropologists, that exemplifies unequal societies with an established hierarchy based on birthrights. Since then, the concept of chiefdom has been widely debated among scholars. In order to test the actual applicability of the chiefdom model in a real case study, which appears more fruitful than an abstract speculation, the authors reconsider the specific prehistoric context of Malta between the 3500 and the 1500 BC. As for the Temple period, a central question is posed: are the megalithic centres the materialised traces of an early emergence of social inequality in the central Mediterranean? Moreover, the possible reasons behind the collapse of Temple period society are discussed, as well as the socio-ideological transformations occurred during the Early Bronze Age.