Some ancient cultural and social groups known from history or literature did not left any material evidences on the ground. Furthermore, specific material remains cannot be related to any information provided by literary sources. Therefore we can only assume the existence of specific social groups – poor and disabled persons, foreigners or, generally speaking, individuals marginalized for cultural, economical, political reasons, as well as women and children – that seem to have left no historical or archaeological signs.
With this conference we would tackle the issue of the archaeological and historical invisibility (disappearance or obliteration) of these groups. Interesting topics could be, for instance, the study of the characteristics of these people’s material culture, which avoid the preservation of their archaeological context, the reasons why they did not have any access to literary production, and the reasons why some material or literary sources have been destroyed, erased or hidden.
A further point of view deals with innovative methodological approaches: we want to verify whether novel interpretations can be proposed, according to new research and analytical methods applied to archaeological remains and historical sources, and why in many cases some sources and data have not been analyzed in order to find information about specific social or cultural groups.
We accept papers in Italian and English, dealing with any geographical, chronological and disciplinary context, with archaeological, historical, geographical but also philosophical, sociological and literary perspective. Pure methodological papers are also accepted. Papers are supposed to be 20 minutes long.
We welcome anonymous abstract (max 300 words) to be received within 20th October 2012 to the following e-mail address:
The paper selection will be carried out within the following two weeks.
Viola Gheller, Francesco Carrer
Dipartimento di Filosofa, Storia e Beni Culturali
Università degli Studi di Trento
