The uses of the past, and particularly of Antiquity, due to its thickness and permanence, have been present throughout history, reflecting the fabric of apologetic and ideological narratives, often laudatory, but sometimes critical, warped into compositions and rhetorics helping to consolidate order, or just a vision of time. This Antiquity, this past re-presented in different ways, in image, in text, in music, repeatedly and up to contemporary times, is part of our worldview. And it is understood through the reception, mediation, and use of its representations, of its discourses and of its materialities. Hence, understanding Antiquity is not limited to the exiguity of its chronology. Studying it is a way of understanding the times that used and incorporated it. It is not exclusively a chronology enclosed in itself; it is a stratigraphy of meanings whose understanding is essential to understand time. The research cultivated and practised in this group reflects its epistemological openness, through the cross-cutting and interdisciplinary nature of its views. One studies Antiquity to understand time, whichever it may be, and seeks to understand time in order to understand the way in which the past is received, incorporated and used. Interdisciplinarity, resulting from the intersection of philosophy, history, literature, archaeology, and history of art, corresponds to the cross-cutting, comprehensive, and complex view that is essential to understanding the intrinsic value of Antiquity in each time and in each present.

Helena Trindade Lopes
Coordinator

Manuel F. S. Patrocínio
Vice-coordinator

Francisco Caramelo
Representative of the Permanent Committee for Scientific Committee

representacoes_cham@fcsh.unl.pt