From August 28 to 31, Sapienza University of Rome is hosting thousands of archaeologists from all over Europe and much of the world for the annual conference of the European Association of Archaeologists. The largest association of archaeologists in Europe, founded in 1994 to bring together scholars from the entire continent in a single forum for discussion and debate, emphasising their common history of continuous intertwining, is coming to Rome for the first time. Previous editions in Italy had been in 2009, in Riva del Garda and in Ravenna in 1997.

The 30th edition of the annual conference promises to be the largest to date, with over 5000 registered archaeologists representing all the different figures in archaeology, from site professionals to academics and experts in archaeological heritage management, with a wide participation of young researchers.

The motto of the conference Persisting with change indicates the processes of resistance, continuity, renewal, as well as resilience, resistance, residuality; that is, all forms of persistence, active and also contrastive, that take place in the face of necessary and inevitable changes in every moment and aspect of human life and the trajectory of the world.

Sapienza is supported by the National Research Council, all the public universities in Lazio, and the institutions in Rome and Lazio belonging to the Ministry of Culture, the City of Rome and the Lazio Region, whose core activity is archaeology. In particular, the Direzione generale musei and the Istituto centrale per l’Archeologia of the Ministry of Culture, the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum, the Capitoline Superintendency for Cultural Heritage and the Department of Culture of the City of Rome, and, among all the parks, museums and superintendencies, the Soprintendenza speciale Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio of Rome and the Archaeological Park of Ostia Antica, as well as the international academies in Rome and the professional associations CIA and ANA.

The network of relationships that the conference managed to foster is a sign of a field, archaeology, that is increasingly asserting its active role in planning and imagining the future, through a measured balance of preservation and change, of reflection on the past and projection towards the future of European and global communities, of conscious and planned transformation, ‘persisting with change’.