Lab2PT — Conferences — Workshops and Free courses
Workshops and Free courses
Workshop | Rethinking Falperra: Towards a Critical Reading of Landscapes of Power in the Early Middle Ages
This workshop proposes to revisit Falperra from a critical and interdisciplinary perspective, approaching the site not simply as an object of study in its own right, but as a starting point for reflecting on the ways in which landscapes of power were constructed, organised and transformed during the Early Middle Ages. The session aims to bring the archaeological materiality, architecture, stratigraphy and chronology of the site into dialogue with a broader territorial scale, questioning the relationships between buildings, spaces, networks, resources, visibility, and the ways in which power was exercised and represented. Rather than seeking definitive interpretations, the workshop aims to identify problems, formulate new questions, and critically discuss some of the categories we use to interpret these contexts: power, monumentality, authority, occupation, transformation and memory. Falperra will thus serve as a laboratory for critical reflection, allowing different interpretations to be confronted and comparisons with other European contexts to be explored, while remaining attentive to the historical and material specificity of the site. The workshop is conceived as a space for collective work and discussion. Starting from the evidence currently available, we will progressively move from the building to the wider territory and, finally, towards a comparative perspective, seeking to identify working hypotheses, methodological challenges and new avenues for research.

September 29, 2026 9 am–1.30 pm
UM Archaeology Department, Convent of São Francisco, Braga
Lab2PT/IN2PAST Universidade Portucalense Infante Dom Henrique; University of Granada; Polytechnic University of Catalonia; University of Alcalá de Henares; University of Chieti–Pescara “G. d’Annunzio”; University of Aveiro; University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
Coordination | Rebeca Blanco-Rotea (Lab2PT/IN2PAST - UMinho) Participants | Lauro Olmo (Universidade de Alcalá de Henares), Rebeca Blanco-Rotea (Lab2PT/IN2PAST/UMinho), Enrico Cirelli (Universidade de Bologna), Jorge Sanjurjo-Sánchez (Universidade da Coruña), Manuela Martins (Lab2PT/IN2PAST/UMinho)