Conques in the Global World. Transferring Knowledge: From Material to Immaterial Heritage (concluded)
Conques, a small village in Southern France, is annually visited by thousands of tourists and pilgrims allured by its charm and spirituality, which, however, sharply contrasts with the lack of comprehensive scholarly attention paid to its cultural significance. Its date, level of reconstruction, and place in the history of art have all been disputed, but never studied in a systematic and complex way.
The CONQUES project thus aims to carry out the first truly interdisciplinary and integrative research on this site, combining expertise from many different fields (art history, history, anthropology, music and performance studies, archaeology, archaeometry, digital technology, and visual studies), and thus to strengthen its currently marginal role in scholarly discourse and popularity among general public. The research team consisting of experts from six European and two American institutions will investigate major stages in the medieval construction of Conques to reconstruct crucial elements in the development of European culture and re-write the story of the 19th and 20th-century "re-invention" of the European Middle Ages.
With regard to the communication and dissemination of research results, the Bibliotheca Hertziana team has produced a comprehensive annotated photo documentation of the architectural sculpture of the abbey church and the treasury objects of Conques. Both image collections are openly accessible via the EasyDB platform.
