Castello del Buonconsiglio monumenti e collezioni provinciali
THE GREAT ROUTES OF CIVILISATIONS
25/01/2011
Relations and exchanges between the Mediterranean and Central EuropeFrom Prehistory to Roman Times
| Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio 1 July 2011 - 13 November 2011 |
| Munich, Archäologische Staatssammlung , 15 December 2011 – 27 May 2012 |
Press Release
And to think we ever believed we could invent anything new!
Such a thought will occur to many visitors to this extremely rich exhibition, which features over 400 objects, many of them unique. The exhibition will take place at Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento and will be curated by the museum’s director, Franco Marzatico, by Rupert Gebhard, the director of the Munich museum and by Paul Gleirscher, the curator of the Klagenfurt museum.
Themes such as mobility, the circulation of people and goods as well as ideas about multiculturalism are not the sole preserve of the modern world. These are aspects that man - traveller and explorer par excellence - has addressed over thousands of years in Europe and throughout the world. This fascinating exhibition uses a selection of precious archaeological exhibits from over 50 Italian and foreign museums and Offices to tell of the long distance contacts, exchanges and relations that marked developments in European civilisations with the transmission of knowledge and the spread of different ways of life. A dense web of routes extends between the Mediterranean and Central Europe whose threads interweave and separate in a continuous becoming that has resulted in distant and diverse lands and cultures finding common elements.
The exhibition traces the centuries-old threads of this immense and complex web, starting from the initial spread, to the north and south of the Alps, of the artistic expressions and figures of the so-called Great Mothers, until the era of the cosmopolitanism and globalisation of the Roman Empire.
The various ‘Routes of Civilisation’ were not simply used to transport goods: they conveyed men with their beliefs and languages, which at times sprang up locally and at times reached the Old Continent from the East.
Alongside the trails left by commerce, documented by raw materials and exotic goods, the exhibition follows adventurous paths of innovations that have led to changes in behaviour and ideas.
Already in prehistoric times, raw materials and goods were taken astonishing distances on the backs of men, in boats, loaded onto animals or, after the invention of the wheel, on the first carts. And the first social differences were consolidated through exchanges and commerce.
Rank soon required external signs of membership, and this stimulated the search for precious status symbols, the more exclusive and esoteric the better.
However, excessive riches lead to looting, invasions and migrations, occasionally controlled by diplomatic marriages and strategic alliances.
Europe saw the spread of new knowledge, from agriculture to metallurgy, but also cuisine and aspects associated with the ideology of feasting.
Forms and ideas contaminated different populations, including archetypes like that of female fertility or the hero-warrior figure of the athlete. But there were also animal figures, the expression of an animalistic art that flourished in different areas, or iconographies of boats, the sun chariot, the tree of life or images of the Lord and Lady of the Animals, depicted on a range of supports, whose power and beauty are astounding. Not to mention the enigmatic Bronze Age tablets, golden solar discs, funeral masks, votive offerings and astragals, recording the spread of cults and influences.
Finally came the spread of alphabetic writing, from the Phoenicians to the Greeks, to the Etruscans, to the Alpine people, culminating in the hegemony of Latin.
The exceptional artefacts on display in this unique exhibition tell a story of connections but also of contrasts, of forms of ‘otherness’ that mark out individual territories. The concept of the glocal of which so much is said at present is not an entirely new idea.