Brightening the Dark Ages, Archaic Greek Culture and Its Past, International Conference 27-30 September 2023

The main aim of the conference is to explore the interactions between the Dark Ages and archaic Greek culture from the perspective of historical Greek society (i.e. the archaic period). To achieve this goal, two complementary aims are taken into account: (1) to give a new overview of the cultural changes in the 12th-9th centuries BCE, with their regional specificities and their phases, and to try to understand also the memories that each people had of their past; (2) to evaluate, from time to time, the contribution that this scholarly update makes to the study of Greek archaic society and its cultural and artistic manifestations (especially poetry). The first looks forward, i.e. from Mycenaean and post-Mycenaean culture to the results of Archaic Greek culture, while the second looks back, i.e. from Archaic culture to previous culture, and tries to highlight the elements of the "new" Greek civilisation that can be traced back to older periods, either directly or with various layers of adaptation. The combination of these two points of view could be very useful in defining new questions that can be asked based on the sources. 

Since the field of research to be explored is very broad, we plan to mix methodological presentations and case study presentations and to have scholars with different backgrounds and approaches speak alternately in each session of the conference.