Prehistoric Cart Rut Networks of the Maltese Archipelago: A Rigorous Multivariate Lévy/Power-Law Analysis with Paleogeographic, Environmental, and Ritual Variables

We present a multivariate Lévy/power-law analysis of the prehistoric cart rut network of Malta, Gozo,and Comino, based on 124 georeferenced sites with real coordinates extracted from Trinkler'ssystematic field inventory (malta-cartruts.ch, 2022). Six environmental and archaeological controlvariables are incorporated: (1) terrain type and slope gradient; (2) distance to sea and coastalexposure; (3) proximity to megalithic temples and hypogea; (4) proximity to ritual cave sites; (5)estimated Holocene forest cover at ~8,000 BP (Bonanomi et al. 2019); and (6) paleo-sea-level statusat −22 m (~8,500 BP), the period of maximum inter-island connectivity. Three networkconfigurations are tested: (A) Malta only (n = 102), (B) Malta+Gozo as modern separate islands (n =124), and (C) the unified Early Holocene island (n = 127, including three reconstructedpaleogeographic nodes on the now-submerged Sikka l-Bajda platform). All three networkconfigurations strongly reject the Gaussian null model (KS test p < 10⁻¹⁰⁰), confirming Lévy-stableheavy-tailed topology