This Used to be my Playground (and other prehistoric temples), by Saviour Pirotta

A lot of readers have been in touch asking about the temples which form the background for the second half of my latest book in the Wolfsong series, The Mysterious Island. 

The island in question is Malta. The main characters in the book chase the series's main baddie there and discover a culture spiritually more advanced than their own. While they are still adherents of animism, believing that every single inanimate object has a spirit that must be honoured and placated, the islanders have moved on to goddess worship. 

Malta has several megalithic temples from the Stone and Bronze ages, some of which are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites and rightfully protected by law, security guards and entrance fees. When I was a kid they were still open to the elements (much like other historical sites, like early Christian tombs, remains of Roman villas etc) and I used to explore them often. I even know guys who played football around the altars, kicking the ball against the standing stones. Can you even imagine?

I only use two of the temples in my book, chosen because of their geographical position and because they fitted into my timeline. The first one is a complex called Tarxien Temples and marks the height of temple building and decoration on the island.  Built from around 3250BC, the temples have elaborate carvings and show signs that they were used for large scale rituals and animal sacrifice. Their use evolved over the years and in the Bronze Age became cremation cemeteries. The builders left enormous stone balls on the site, which were used for transporting and moving the standing stones. They give a rare glimpse into the building methods of the times. An image of a fertility goddess, today called 'the fat lady' was discovered inside it. Its top half is missing, allowing my imagination to run riot as to what the goddess's face would have looked like. Was it motherly? Stern? Benign? Sword and sandal movie type scary?

The second temple is actually an underground necropolis called the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum. Founded circa 4000BC, it has various halls and chambers connected by a labyrinth of steps and corridors. The ceilings are decorated with spirals painted in red ochre that survives to this very day. Its 'holy of holies' faces the winter solstice, and it boasts an 'oracle', a hole in a wall. Apparently, if you stuck your head in it and talked, your voice would echo around the entire temple.

Another statue of a goddess was found here, today called 'the sleeping lady'. She's a big-hipped matron lying asleep on her side. In my book she's referred to as She Who Sleeps and waking her up is inviting mortal danger and chaos. Who was she really? No one knows but one of the joys of writing about ancient history is that you get to fill in the gaps. 

I can no longer play in the prehistoric temples of Malta but they are still my playground in a literary sense, and they will always be.

Saviour Pirotta's Wolfsong much acclaimed series is set at the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age. The third book, The Mysterious Island, is out now, published by Maverick Books. The final instalment, The Wolf's Song is due in Spring 2022.   Follow Saviour on twitter @spirotta and on instagram @saviour2858.

Back to the stone age - by Lu Hersey

I love research. It saves me having to write anything and yet still feels like I'm working. And research can spark all kinds of ideas - even if you don't really need the information right now, you never know when you might use it in the future.

Which explains how I ended up on a flintknapping course for a day at Berrycroft Hub, in Oxfordshire. The family were mystified, but I told them being able to make a flint knife might be useful, come the revolution. My daughter remarked that come the revolution, we'd all still have kitchen knives. Obviously I ignored her.

My last bit of practical research was going on a Bronze Age dagger making course earlier this year at the same place. What I learned that day might not be much use in a post apocalyptic world without a handy supply of copper and tin, but it was very useful background for the book I was writing, set in the bronze age. Not that anyone in the book makes a bronze dagger, but if they'd suddenly needed to, I was prepared.

My current book (okay, current book idea) is set in the Mesolithic. So of course I wanted to find out how to knap flint in case my characters need to know. Anyway, just like the day spent bronze casting, it turned out to be a very interesting experience. Those stone age people were clever. Knapping flint is much harder that it looks.

Some archaeological artefacts we got to examine before attempting to make our own

The course is run by James Dilley, an experimental archaeologist and expert in ancient technology. James specialises in recreating objects from the past, and probably knows more about making polished stone hand axes and other stone age tools than anyone else in England. He even makes them for English Heritage documentary films, using stone age methods - with no 21st century short cuts.

Our main aim for the day was to make a flint hand axe. There are lots of examples of these in museums, as we've been making them for over a million years. James brought in several original artefacts for us to study and hold (you've no idea how exciting it is to hold a stone axe made 1.2 million years ago).  The fact people were making stone tools perfectly adequately during in all that time meant it had to be easy, right?

A hand axe made by an early hominid 1.2 million years ago

Wrong. Flint is hard and brittle. It often contains fossils and faults that mean the next whack of the stone at your flint rock might chip off a flake of flint, a shower of flint dust, or (in my case) half the axe by mistake. James demonstrated the art, chipping off flakes with amazing accuracy, and made a very passable stone hand axe in twenty minutes.

I ended up with half a badly formed hand axe and a bleeding thumb (accuracy using a stone to whack flint with is very important - a valuable lesson) over an entire afternoon - and that's after a morning of learning to handle flint well enough to make myself a flint hide scraper and a simple cutter. Looking at my broken hand axe and comparing it with a tool made by an early hominid over a million years ago, I have to admit the original was a whole lot better.

James and Harry the jackdaw examine my hand axe to see if it's salvageable

However, the stone age characters in my book will know all about the tools they make and use, and I'll try my best not to include nerdy passages of pure info dump about the process they used to make them. Practical research like this is invaluable - and really fun.

And possibly addictive. I've already booked on a course making containers from tree bark, just like Otzi the ice age hunter had with him when his body thawed out of the ice. And there's making prehistoric jewellery making one coming up that looks excellent...

All of which goes to explain why it takes me much longer to write a book than someone like Enid Blyton ever did. Okay, she might have written over 100 books, but I bet she couldn't make a flint hand axe.

Though sadly it seems, neither can I...


Lu Hersey
luhersey.com
@LuWrites