Programme

Papers presentations are allotted ten minutes and will be grouped in 1.5 hr-sessions with eight presentations.  Fast – too fast – talking is 120 words to a minute. If presentations are accompanied by digital slides, speakers rarely achieve more than 80 to 100 words in a minute. A congress talk of 10 minutes must be restricted to a spoken script of about 1000 words.

Ten minutes will be allotted for discussion for all the papers. This is limited but as is commonplace, delegates should make the most of coffee and lunch breaks to discuss results with others.  QR codes can also be used in presentations to direct delegates to detail and supplementary information that can be found elsewhere, including preliminary publications, information on social media, etc.    

Speakers who will deliver presentations in Italian, French or Spanish are encouraged to have English captions to slides.  Speakers may wish to include the congress logo in the presentation.

Download congress logo

Poster sessions constitute an essential pillar of our congress, offering a dynamic platform for sharing new research and exchanging new insights, field discoveries, and advances made within Phoenician and Punic archaeology.

To assist you in designing a visual presentation that effectively communicates your research to an international audience, we have compiled the general guidelines below. Aside from a few necessary requirements, please note that the remaining recommendations are intended as general guidance and best practice advice to help you structure your work, rather than a set of rigid technical constraints. We encourage clear, balanced, and visually engaging presentations.

Printing and mounting requirements 

All posters must be brought to the conference venue ready-printed by the delegates themselves. On-site printing or reprinting services are not provided by the organising committee or the venue. Velcro strips will be available from the registration desk.

Details regarding your designated poster board number, specific panel location in the exhibition hall, mounting methods, and session and display timeframes will be communicated to you via email closer to the event date.

Poster Format requirements 

• The poster must be size A0 (84.1 cm wide by 118.9 cm high) and arranged in a portrait position.
  
  
• The poster must be formatting within a 5cm-wide page margin.
  
  
• The congress logo (download below) must be placed in the top-left corner of the poster.

1. Style & format suggestions 

• Arrange your content into vertical columns. This creates a natural reading flow from top-to-bottom and left-to-right as delegates view your display.
• Aim for a balanced distribution of roughly 30% concise text, 40% high-quality visuals, and 30% open/white space to keep the presentation open, readable, and visually appealing.
• Utilise clean, highly legible sans-serif fonts (e.g., Arial, Helvetica, Calibri, or Trebuchet MS). Restrict your layout to a maximum of two font families.
• Recommended Text Hierarchy: Poster Title: 72–85 pt (legible from 3 m); Section Headers: 36–48 pt (legible from 2 m); Body Text & Captions: 24–32 pt (legible from 1–1.5 m).
• Maintain strong contrast between text and background (e.g. dark text on a light, warm background). Avoid busy, dark, or multi-coloured backgrounds that impede legibility.

2. Visuals 

• Ensure all site location maps, and site plans feature a clear North arrow and scale.
• Include high-resolution graphics (minimum 300 DPI at 1:1 print scale) for photographs, images, and line drawings.
• Avoid dense tabular data, and replace with clean visual charts with clearly labelled axes and units.

3. Content Organization 

• Place the project title, author name(s), institutional affiliations, and official logos prominently in the top centre and right header zone.
• Avoid lengthy paragraphs. Break text into short bullet points (under 50 words per block) with bold lead-ins so that delegates can absorb key findings in 1 to 2 minutes.

4. Digital Integration & Export

• Save your final layout as a high-resolution, print-ready PDF with embedded fonts before sending it to print.
• Consider placing a small QR code in a lower corner linking to supplementary materials, such as available published results, project websites, or your contact details.

We trust these guidelines will be helpful as you prepare your presentation.

Download congress logo

Excursions will be organised for congress delegates to the multi-period archaeological site of Tas-Silġ in Marsaxlokk and to St Paul’s Catacombs in Rabat, courtesy of Heritage Malta. On display at the St Paul’s Catacombs visitors centre will be finds from discoveries made in a number of tombs discovered in the area of Għajn Klieb and Għajn Qajjet, Rabat (Malta). Logistical details will be provided in due course.  

Attendance to the congress dinner was an option provided at registration stage, set at a cost of EUR65. It will be held in Mdina. Return transport will be provided from Valletta. 

Tas-Silġ is a multi-period archaeological site that is currently only open to the public by appointment. It has the remains of the fanum Iunonis mentioned in Cicero’s orations against Verres and given coordinates in Ptolemy’s Geography.  The site includes remains of the sanctuary that was dedicated to Astarte by Phoenician and Punic settlers. A temporary exhibition has been set up to bring to public attention the results of years of archaeological excavations and research at the site by the Missione Archeologica Italiana a Malta, the University of Malta, and Heritage Malta. Delegates will be able to visit the exhibition on presentation of the Congress delegate tag.

The rest of the exhibition space at the National Museum of Archaeology will also be accessible to Congress delegates. This includes the early prehistoric galleries on the ground floor, the late prehistoric gallery on the first floor together with a permanent exhibition on the first floor related to the Phoenicians and one to the Xlendi Phoenician shipwreck.