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Archaeological Publishing Fair - Read at BiblioArché - Convention - Limes lives again - #odetamò - Ancient book exhibition

Read at BiblioArchè hosts a series of encounters aimed to discuss the event’s theme in its multiple aspects, always placing the archaeological book at the centre of the investigation.

To illustrate the themes of this section there will be a small exhibition of archaeological artefacts (ex. Milestones), that are the result of the recovery work and consequent restitution to public fruition conducted by the Group for the Archaeological Heritage Safeguard of Guardia di Finanza.

During the two days dedicated to “Read at BiblioArchè” it will be presented, in collaboration with the British School at Rome, the project museum.dià 2016 (the second edition of the convention dedicated to the museum sector, through which Dià Cultura Foundation aims to promote the research and innovation in the field of museology). On this occasion there will be presented also the records of the international convention museum.dià 2014, centred on the theme of narration in museums, with the contribution of experts and sect’s operators.

Read at BiblioArchè will host presentations, encounters, small performances and round tables.
There are many thematic ideas behind the composition of the talks and activities: hereinafter we propose a curatorial outline that presents the angle and the orientations of this section.

Structural component of the relationship between the individual, the society and the territory, the ambivalent nature of the boundary resides in the opacity of the identity concept of which the boundary is a constitutive element, a “geographical fact” that manifests its existence.

Identity and boundary are inseparably tied in a one – to – one relationship: the strengthening and weakening of one affects the shape of the other. At the same time though it is that same limitation, which comprises ideas and values that gives a culture space and therefore freedom in respect to the rest neighbouring social contests.

Natural and artificial, boundary and access: the limes in its dual nature.
In this meaning, considering the space adjacent to the border, precisely in those hybrid areas known as “cross-border”, questions arises on the anthropological value of what happens there: the border, restriction and opportunity, has to be seen as the place of conflict or as a laboratory for dialogue and creativity?

The populations in border areas have always had a “two-faced” gaze, on one side the country of origin and on the other side not foreigners, but a population “in between”, that mitigates differences.

Therefore the border areas become something special. Place of conflict management, the border has been always perceived as space of hybridization and discussion: territories where languages, traditions and ideas are continuously merged and where new ways of communication and coexistence are created. A place of creativity and uniqueness, where tolerance is an essential instrument for the very existence of the community.

In this place mediation instruments can arise to which refer to build a true globalized and multicultural society.

The limes, moreover, disruption point that leads to the other, extends on different levels of geographical ranges:  the border, interpreted in its urban dimension, takes as unit of measure the city with its material and immaterial walls.


In this unit, interconnected while circumscribed environments open up to a space that goes from the individual to the group (house, neighborhood, city) or, with a more current meaning, from a center (that is historical, directional or economic) to the periphery; the latter, in the modern city, is often the place of social exclusion and human and urban decline but also of youth and creativity, freedom and redemption.

The other is everywhere as a border can be everywhere.
The center – periphery dichotomy becomes a paradigm trough which is possible to read the anthropic space of human geography: traditions and different life styles, conflicts and attractions, the old and the new are opposed and permeated, becoming in the difficulties of a shared harmony extraordinary factors of social and economic development.
This research expands to involve broader concepts: the relationship between different cities, and then between regions, as far as to consider broader scopes as nations, continents and lastly the entire planet. 
In its psychological meaning the border can also assume an abstract sense and in more than one way: the boundary to overcome, the knowledge to seek, the relief to imagine.

From the Pillars of Hercules to the remote corners of the universe, to reach the origin and the concept of destiny. Odysseus and the human curiosity: the boundary as a challenge, an investigation, a discovery and a defeat. The border as a limit to knowledge and as an obstacle to evolution. The border as constitutive element of the conquest. The ancient histories mixed to the modern ones: the Atlantic’s Phoenix of the Gadir colony as the space probe’s Pioneer and Voyager beyond the solar system; Vasco de Gama and the new sea routes as Alexander the Great on the Indo river’s shores.

The boundary can be placed between fiction and reality: the representation of the possible other or of the impossible as a mean of expression of the imagination and of the metaphor to rebuild the collective unconscious of the present. From the myth to the science fiction, from the fairytales to the theater: research themes in which mankind reproduces its own interior world or the past and the future ones, creating, between reality and fiction.
Mountains as the place of the gods, oceans full of terrifying and marvelous creatures, the space of the unknown, the terror and the fascination: the nature of the boundary is mystery, is insuperable bond and thus for necessity it turns into the place of the imagination and of fantasy.