About us

Established in 1986, the University of Siena’s Center for Anthropology and the Ancient Word (Centro "Antropologia e Mondo Antico" - AMA) promotes scholarly collaboration among classicists, historians, anthropologists, semioticists and culture theorists. It hosts a close-knit group of scholars whose collaboration in numerous international conferences, workshops and seminars has made the Center famous throughout Europe and in the United States. Research conducted at the Center focuses primarily on the study of:

• myth as a fundamental narrative category in culture;
• daily life;
• the relationship between man and animal;
• forms of identity;
• iconography and iconology in an anthropological perspective;
• the reception of classical culture;
• "sustainable" teaching of the classical languages.

Currently, the Center’s faculty consists of eighteen professors belonging to the departments of Classical Studies, Archaeology and History of Art and Communication Studies.