What is archaeology? How is it perceived by European citizens? What role does it play in modern society?

These are the questions which the exhibition Archaeology & ME tries to answer. The exhibition is promoted by the Soprintendenza Speciale for the Coliseum and the Forum and the Museo Nazionale Romano, in collaboration with Emilia Romagna’s Istituto per i Beni Artistici Culturali e Naturali, organised by Electa.

The exhibition is divided into two parts.
The first section presents a selection of the results from the European competition “You(r) Archaeology – Archaeology according to me” – drawings and photographs, some of them by children, comics, canvases, watercolours and graphic compositions – in the context of the Nearch project (New Scenarios for Community-involved Archaeology, funded by the European Commission). Nearch is a European network of cooperation involving 16 partners from 11 countries whose task is to explore the methodological, social and professional changes taking place in the world of archaeology and their consequences.

The second section, entitled “The Past in the Present”, illustrates the various replies of archaeologists to a single question: What is Archaeology? They highlight the role played by archaeological research as a tool for understanding some unusual aspects of our time, such as migration, or the use and abuse of the past, through the appropriation or destruction of archaeological monuments.

The exhibition layout continues with the collections of the Museo Nazionale Romano at Palazzo Massimo: a ‘diffused’ section creating a link between the subjects addressed in the exhibition itself and the permanent collection.