Palimpsest

Etymology

From Greek palimpsestos, "scraped again," combining palin, "again," with psen, "to scrape, rub." Parchment was costly, so scribes would erase an old text and write afresh on the cleaned skin; centuries later, the ghost of the first writing often reappears. From that practice the word became a favorite metaphor for surfaces that carry the residue of their own past.

noun · /PAL-imp-sest/
A manuscript reused after its earlier writing was scraped or washed away, leaving faint traces of the original beneath the new text.
What it names
A literal object from the age of scarce parchment, now a rich metaphor for anything — a city, a mind, a document — where older layers show through what was written over them.
Example
The old quarter was a palimpsest of empires, each conqueror building over the last without ever quite erasing it.
Related idea
Vestige names a single surviving trace; a palimpsest names a whole surface layered with the partly erased marks of everything that came before.