Fragmented souvenirs

1Since its creation in 2009, the Centre for the Study of Ancient Worlds (CEMA) – one of the research centres within INCAL, the Institute of Civilisations, Arts and Letters at the University of Louvain (of which also Aegis, our Aegean Interdisciplinary Studies research group forms part and to which all researchers associated with the ARC-programme belong) – decided to focus its attention to manifestations of destruction, crisis and fragmentation as a research axis for the scholars from the different disciplines – archaeology, ancient history, philology – that comprised the centre. Besides their pertinence within the study of ancient societies which we considered understudied, their present-day relevance also seemed clear. This led to a first, three-day conference in December 2011, during which many aspects of destruction were discussed by archaeologists, philologists, historians and theoreticians of which the proceedings were published in 2013 (Driessen 2013). Among the phenomen