Destruction

Destruction remains a relatively unexplored and badly understood topic in
archaeology and history. The term itself refers to some form and measurable
degree of damage inflicted to an object, a system or a being, usually
exceeding the stage during which repair is still possible but most often it is
examined for its impact with destructive events interpreted in terms of a
punctuated equilibrium, extraordinary features that represent the end of an
archaeological culture or historical phase and the beginning of a new one.
The three-day international workshop of which this volume presents the
proceedings took place at Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium, from November 24 to 26,
2011 and was organized by CEMA – Centre d'Étude des Mondes Antiques – one of
the research centres within INCAL – Institut de Civilisations, Arts et
Lettres. Our aim with organising this gathering was to seriously engage with
destruction as a phenomenon and how it is perceived by archaeologists,
historians and philologists of the ancient world. The volume is similarly
structured to the workshop which it reflects, with first a series of more
theoretical papers and then following a chronological and geographical order.