Mapping the Aegean: Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber Insularum & the Birth of Classical Archaeology
Please join the Classics Department for a talk by visiting postdoctoral scholar and Marie Curie Fellow, Dr. Benedetta Bessi.
Mapping the Aegean: Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Liber Insularum and the Birth of Classical Archaeology
The Liber Insularum Archipelagi (1420) by the Florentine traveler Cristoforo Buondelmonti can be considered the first guide to the Greek islands, each of them described by a textual paragraph and illustrated by colour maps, in a format which gave rise to the new literary genre of Isolaria and enjoyed great popularity between the 15th and the 16th century in Italy and Europe. This talk discusses the Liber Insularum in the frame of its Humanistic background while highlightening the fundamental role that this work had in opening the path to the rediscovery of Greece, not only as a literary topos suspended in an atemporal dimension but also as a concrete geographical space with a long history and rich cultural heritage. Differently from previous scholarship which limited itself to extrapolate isolated passages of the Liber for the sake of studying single islands or, even worst, dismissed this work to the rank of medieval mirabilia, I argue that Cristoforo Buondelmonti and his Liber Insularum, are to be credited with a groundbreaking role in the exploration of Greece and the birth of Greek archaeology. In the course of the lecture, I will also illustrate the combination of traditional and digital methods used to support such claims.
Benedetta Bessi is a Classical archaeologist interested in the cultural history of the ancient Mediterranean, history of archaeology and digital humanities.
She has conducted fieldwork and research in Italy, Greece, Syria and Libya and has travelled extensively to North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East acquiring first-hand familiarity with archaeological sites, museums and the cultural heritage of these areas.
She holds a B.A. in Classics from the University of Florence (with one year at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich), a postgraduate specialization degree in Classical Archaeology from the Italian Archaeological School of Athens (SAIA), a PhD in Greek and Roman Archaeology and History of Art from the University of Messina and a three-year diploma in Arabic language and Arabic culture from the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (ISIAO).
She was Mary Seeger O'Boyle Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton and Alexander Onassis research fellow at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens.
She has taught courses in Classics and Classical Archaeology at many American institutions in Rome including John Cabot University and Temple Rome Program and she has been featured in documentaries and TV shows on History Channel, National Geographic and Netflix.
As the recipient of the European Community Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellowship, she is now working on the project “Mapping the Aegean: Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber insularum (15th c.) and the Origins of Classical Archaeology” https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/894231.