Archaeology at the Malta Pavilion, British Empire Exhibition, 1924

Lecture by Prof. Reuben Grima

The British Empire Exhibition held at Wembley in 1924 and 1925 drew a larger audience than any other mega-event in Britain until that time.

Malta’s participation in 1924 came at a formative moment in its political history. The granting of self-government in 1921 had given new impetus to Malta’s aspirations for greater self-determination and for a distinct national identity. It also coincided with an intensive period of archaeological excavation and discovery, led largely by the indefatigable Themistocles Zammit. Archaeology, and more particularly, prehistory, inevitably became caught up in debates about Maltese race, identity, and political destiny.

The Malta Pavilion at Wembley was closely shaped by all of these forces. It made use of Malta’s history and archaeology to give form to new ways of thinking about Maltese identity. The extensive references that the pavilion made to the period of the Knights of Saint John are well known. What is not well known is that the pavilion also made systematic use of prehistoric remains in the design of its interior. The decisions that led to this design will be traced. It will be argued that Malta’s recently discovered Neolithic culture lent itself to the creation of new narratives of a distinct Maltese race, and that the Malta Pavilion at Wembley summed up a new and powerful narrative of Maltese identity, profoundly shaped by the work of Zammit and his co-workers, and by the prevailing political context. Although the use of archaeology in the pavilion has been largely forgotten, some of the myths about Maltese race and identity that were invented around the same period still persist today.