Gozo of Malta – ‘Gozo’ of Crete (Gavdos). Thoughts on a twinned Mediterranean micro-insular place name and epic tradition

Κατερίνα Κόπακα Cretica Chronika 31 (2011): 13-32.

Abstract

Gavdos, a small island off SW Crete, happened to share in the past the name Gozo with its well-known Maltese counterpart, as we know from texts and maps of the Venetian period. Both islands, moreover, complete in epic identity, by laying a claim – together with many other isles – to having been Calypso’s legendary/Homeric universe. These apparently fortuitous but, in some way, rather parallel fates are used as a starting point for a wider discussion of possible analogies in the lives of such “bigger islands’ isles”, within the diachronic geopolitical contexts of the Mediterranean.

This work focuses on environmental and archaeological data from a multidisciplinary research and survey on Gavdos, and aims to piece together Cretan and Maltese indicators of certain – mostly micro-insular (?) – cultural strategies and, possibly, mentalities that result. It also intends to revisit, if summarily, previous research, mainly Sir A. J. Evans’s pioneering writings and J. Evans’s later remarks that compared the prehistoric cultures of Crete and Malta.