This study traces and analyses the evolution of domestic space in Maltese vernacular and ‘polite’ houses from medieval to contemporary times.

Houses and Domestic Space in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Hospitaller Malta is a study concerned with a wide spectrum of early modern dwellings in Malta, ranging from palazzi and affluent residences to peasant dwellings, troglodyte houses, and hovels. The multifaceted approach adopted in this book allows houses and domestic networks to be studied not only in terms of architecture and construction materials, but also as places of human habitation where house dwellers act, react and interact in different contexts and circumstances. Dwellings are places that permit different social and economic activities, whilst providing shelter and security to the household members. Through the available sources, the houses of Hospitaller Malta are analysed in terms of their spatial properties and how they generate privacy, interaction and communication, identity, accessibility, security, visibility, movement and encounters, and, equally important, how domestic space relates to gender roles, status, and class. This work, therefore, seeks to reach a deep and nuanced understanding of domestic space and how it relates to the islands’ history and the development of their society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Over the course of four centuries, the island of Malta underwent several significant political transformations, including its roles as a Catholic bastion under the Knights of St. John between 1530 and 1798, and as a British maritime hub in the nineteenth century. This innovative study draws on both archival evidence and archeological findings to compare slavery and coerced labor, resource control, globalization, and other historical phenomena in Malta under the two regimes: one feudal, the other colonial. Spanning conventional divides between the early and late modern eras, Russell Palmer offers here a rich analysis of a Mediterranean island against a background of immense European and global change.

The Military Orders essay collections arising from the quadrennial conferences held at Clerkenwell in London have come to represent an international point of reference for scholars. This present volume brings together twenty-nine papers given at the seventh iteration of this event. The studies offered here cover regions as disparate as Prussia, Iberia and the Eastern Mediterranean and chronologically span topics from the Twelfth to the Twentieth century. They draw attention to little used textual and non-textual sources, advance challenging new methodologies, and help to place these military-religious institutions in a broader context.

Presents us with a comprehensive point of departure for the study of artistic developments in the Late Middle Ages, from the Norman Conquest at the turn of the twelfth century to the coming of the Knights in 1530. This book shows us that Late Medieval Malta was not an artistic desert, that patronage in Mdina was surprisingly well-informed, and that the Renaissance reached Malta before the coming of the Knights. Architecture, however, lagged behind, and the stylistic and technical innovations reflected the conservatism of an insular society. Through the art and architecture of that period, Professor Buhagiar outlines the Christianization and Latinization process that moved the islands away from a Muslim and North African bias, to a South European sphere of influence. The author's many years of meticulous research and academic activity have resulted in an excellently presented book that can be enjoyed by both the academic and the general reader. Mario Buhagiar is Professor of History of Art and Head of the History of Art Programme at the University of Malta, which he was responsible for establishing in 1988. The author is also responsible for the Late Roman and Byzantine Catacombs and Related Burial Places in the Maltese Islands, and The Iconography of the Maltese Islands 1400-1900: Painting, as well as numerous articles in various journals, both local and foreign.

This collection of essays provides a reassessment of the multifaceted evidence which emerged from excavations carried out in 1909 and 1959 in the settlement of Bahrija, both largely unpublished until now. Bahrija is a key site for understanding the later stages of Maltese prehistory before the beginning of the Phoenician colonial period.