CHAT Conference in Patras, Part 1

I’m just getting back from the 20th annual CHAT Conference in Patras, Greece. It was my first experience with CHAT and it left quite an impression.

Before I ramble on about more specific (and academic things), I should say that the CHAT conference was a pretty remarkable event. Not only were the participants (and the organizers) generous and supportive, but the event lacked the conventional puffery associated with such academic conferences. There were mercifully few “more of a comment than a question” moments and those that were offered were offered in a genuinely helpful way. At the same time, there was a pervasive generosity that infused the entire event.

Patras was a really remarkable city. For whatever reason, I had not spent much time there prior to this conference. In fact, I hadn’t visited the new (post-2009) archaeological museum there which set the collection of material from the region in quite a remarkable space. The Roman period mosaics were the stars of the show and the reconstructed outlines of a Roman period villa, shop, and bath gave a decent sense for the space of these buildings. I do wonder how many of the mosaics are a bit later (perhaps a century?) than they are labeled. 

We not only had a chance to wander around the town, but also got a tour on the first morning of the conference. It was a particularly interesting place to think about Greece’s place in international commerce in the 19th (and into the 20th century). It was remarkable to see the growth of the city (and the construction of massive and oh-so-European churches) in the decades after Greek independence funded by a merchant class grown wealthy in part by the booming Peloponnesus currant trade (and in later decades by trade in tiles and other manufactured goods).

The residues of the bourgeois deployment of globalizing capital formed an appropriate backdrop for a conference committed to historical and contemporary archaeology because so much of historical and contemporary archaeology looks to the local for the signs of the global. At Patras, architectural impact of the city’s place in global economy almost ubiquitous. It was particularly striking how quickly after independence the city became festooned with massive churches, arcaded streets, and impressive civic and commercial amenities.

Ultimately, the presence of impressive amounts of capital even informed the city’s Apostolic aspirations as manifest in the largest church in Greece dedicated to St. Andrew.