The site was discovered during the course of works to consolidate the foundations along the eastern flank of Mdina\‘s town defences (European Economic Area (EEA) Financial Mechanism). Extensive masonry remains were uncovered in a 25 meter stretch directly beneath the existing defensive walls as soon as the superficial topsoil started being removed. The works were suspended to allow an archaeological assessment of the emerging remains in April/ July 2008.

This sector of Mdina\‘s city defences date back to the Late Middle Ages. An archaeological investigation of the inner face of the walls (at the site of Palazzo Xara) had in 1998 established that the existing wall dated to around the 14th Cent and consisted of a high ashlar-faced terrace wall backed by a massive terrapien. These late Medieval defences had replaced an older system of casemented walls which were dated to about the 8th Century (Bruno-Cutajar 2002).

The 2008 investigation exposed and documented a sequence of defensive outworks which abutted the main line of fortifications exposed at Palazzo Xara.

Phase 1. The earliest strata identified at this site consisted of a series of dark earth layers containing exclusively Bronze Age ceramics (Borg In-Nadur Phase). These strata were badly damaged by the construction of the Medieval fortifications. They do however document the expansion of the Mid and Late Bronze Age settlement to these lower slopes of the Mdina ridge.

All traces of Classical occupation in this area were completely removed by the construction of the Medieval defences.

Phase 2. The next structure to be identified on site was a massive sloping ramp of earth, faced with re-utilised classical ashlar blocks. This structure appears to be similar to the stone-lined mound or talus, found in Crusader period castles in the Levant. Over the crest of the talus, a series of level floors and shallow rectangular stone foundations suggest that the mound was surmounted by some form of super-structure or platform.

The ceramics from the construction and occupation layers of the talus include a wide range of Byzantine Globular amphorae, amphorae similar to Otranto-Type 1, cooking pots and some Early Medieval glazed wares including two fragments of Forum Ware. This ceramic assemblage (currently under study by Bruno, B. and Cutajar, N.) seems to indicate the period of construction and first use of the talus as being around the 9th and 10th Centuries.

This mound seems to have been built as a complement to the possibly 8th Cent casemented wall identified in the Xara Palace excavations. This Early Medieval defence work was eventually heavily impacted and entirely buried under the Phase 3. Late Medieval outworks.

Phase 3. By the Late Middle Ages a new system of outworks replaced the older talus structure with a new outwork consisting of a semi-circular tower-like structure. The new structure consisted of an outer wall of neatly cut, small ashlar blocks enclosing a massive stone and earth dump. The structure appears in fact to have been been intended not so much as a tower, but as a raised fighting platform, sited at the foot of the new Late Medieval walls.

The function of the semi-circular structure may also have been that of providing a platform to accommodate the introduction of cannon at some date in the 15th Century. The gun platform would have been necessary to provide enfilading and flanking fire along the western walls of the city, and also to protect the approaches to the new Aragonese walls, as identified in the Palazzo Xara excavations (the structural remains are currently under study by Spiteri S., Mifsud C., Cutajar N.).

This dating of the platform\‘s construction to the 15th Century is also suggested by the latest ceramics recovered from within the foundation backfills, which include some fragments of Late Spanish Luster Ware and Late Medieval local, hand made, coarse-wares.

This structure was eventually razed to the foundation levels, probably in the Late 16th Century when the Mdina defences underwent their first major re-organisation under the new regime of the Knights of St. John. At this time, the Knights introduced a larger flanking entity in the form of pentagonal casemated bastion, designed to take larger and more powerful artillery pieces and the old platform was leveled down to clear the field of fire for the artillery in the flank of the said bastion.