This conference aims to tackle a major problem in the study of the ancient world: the fact that cultural traditions only become visible to us once their first written products are produced and subsequently transmitted. The textual sources which remain to us are effectively just the tip of a much larger iceberg representing cultural traditions often defined (with varying degrees of success) as ‘popular,’ ‘oral,’ or ‘folkloric’. By adopting a new interdisciplinary lens that focuses on the key areas where the written record thoroughly permeates the unwritten one - namely song, religion, magic, and myth – and combining the study of the Ancient Mediterranean with cutting-edge anthropological approaches, this project will explore the true dimensions of the ancient ‘cultural iceberg’ and develop a scholarly framework and interdisciplinary network that permits us for the first time to assess its implications for researchers in Classical Studies (understood in the broadest sense).

This ticket is for non-UCL in-person attendance.

This conference will be taking place at Room 106, Gordon House, 29 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PP from 2-4^th June 2025, at 9:30am-6:00pm each day.