Travel Writing as a Historical and Archaeological Source (PhD)

Travel Writing as a Historical and Archaeological Source

Travel has accompanied human history since its beginnings. Yet it is through the written account of a journey that movement becomes knowledge, memory and a way of making sense of the world. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Italy, Greece and the Ottoman Empire were crossed by European travellers whose journals, letters and published accounts recorded encounters, observations and drawings. Read critically, these texts are an exceptionally rich source for historical and archaeological research. They preserve glimpses of landscapes that have since disappeared, describe monuments now lost or transformed, trace the discovery, reuse and dispersal of antiquities, and illuminate the changing ways in which the ancient past was understood and valued.

Travel narratives also reveal the networks of people who made travel possible: interpreters, dragomans, antiquarians, merchants, consuls, local guides, scholars and officials who mediated access to places, objects and knowledge. At the same time, they offer a unique perspective on the European perception of antiquity, the emergence of archaeological imagination, collecting practices, the circulation of antiquities and the cultural relationships between the western and eastern Mediterranean.

The course explores early modern travel literature as a privileged source for reconstructing the material and cultural history of the Mediterranean. From the very first weeks, students will work directly with primary sources, selecting a corpus of travel accounts together with a monument, archaeological site or landscape to investigate. Through an interdisciplinary, seminar-based approach, they will acquire the methodological tools needed to transform travel narratives into evidence for historical and archaeological research.

Teaching combines seminars with practical workshops devoted to analysing, cataloguing and mapping the sources. Monuments, artefacts, itineraries, individuals, networks of cultural mediation and archaeological contexts will be progressively incorporated into a Web-GIS database designed not simply as a digital archive, but as a collaborative research environment. By selecting, organising and interpreting evidence, students will explore how historical data are created and how narrative sources can be transformed into historical and archaeological knowledge.

The course is organised into three progressive modules. Module 1 introduces the theoretical and methodological foundations for the critical reading of travel literature. Module 2 applies these approaches through seminar discussion and collaborative research centred on the Web-GIS database. Module 3, reserved for PhD students (perfezionandi), develops a more advanced critical engagement with the research results and encourages an active role in leading seminar discussions and contributing to the collective research project.

Module 3 (PhD Students Only)

Module 3 forms the culmination of the course. It provides PhD students with the opportunity to consolidate and extend the methodological approaches introduced in Modules 1 and 2 through critical reflection on the research undertaken and on the interpretative potential of travel literature as a historical and archaeological source. Alongside the continued development of the Web-GIS database and the critical analysis of the material collected, particular emphasis will be placed on discussing the interpretative questions emerging from both individual and collaborative research. The module encourages dialogue across disciplinary perspectives and promotes a shared reflection on historical and archaeological research methods.

In particular:

• 10 hours will be devoted to seminar discussions of readings and research papers selected by the postgraduate students themselves. Participants will introduce the material and lead the discussion alongside the course convenor, with the aim of exploring methodological, historiographical and interpretative issues directly related to the research themes developed during the course.
• 10 hours will be devoted to the critical discussion of the data collected and of the relationships emerging from the Web-GIS database. The laboratory will provide a forum for evaluating research results, refining analytical categories and assessing the potential of the database as a historical and archaeological research tool. PhD students will take an active role in leading discussions, critically evaluating methodological approaches, mentoring the research groups and working alongside the course convenor in guiding the seminar, thereby contributing both to the development of individual research projects and to the growth of the database as a shared research infrastructure.