This project studies the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems to establish the character of past “natural” landscapes and enhance the management of current ones.

This study aims to provide a long time perspective of human landscape manipulation. Studying the roles of prehistoric foragers in past ecosystems is of great importance to establish the character of past 'natural' landscapes and to enhance the management of current ones.

Amy Strecker assesses the institutional framework for landscape protection, analyses the interplay between landscape and human rights, and links the etymology and theory of landscape with its articulation in law.

A GIS-based study for the reconstruction and interpretation of the archaeological datasets of ancient Boeotia

Connecting Agriculture, Crafts, Construction, Transport, and Resilience Strategies

What invertebrates are available to feed nestlings in an agricultural landscape of varied complexity?

The project seeks to come to an understanding of the archaeology of the desert and the ways in which its inhabitants engaged with their constraint, marginal environments through time. It compares and interprets site distribution and community organisation over a long time scale and across several different…

Pastoralist Societies, Rock Art and Literacy in Jordan’s Black Desert (200 BC to 800 AD)

The Cide Archaeological Project: Surveying the Turkish Western Black Sea Region

This PhD project develops and applies a GIS procedure to use legacy survey data in settlement pattern analysis. As part of the research by the LERC project (NWO, Leiden University, KNIR), legacy data produced by surveys in central and southern Italy are examined in a comparative framework to investigate…

Cultural biographies of persons, objects and 'natural' places in the Bronze Age of the Southern Netherlands, c. 2300-600 BC.

In Indigenous Ancestors and Healing Landscapes Jana Pešoutová presents new interpretations of current healing practices in Cuba and the Dominican Republic juxtaposed against the European colonization of the Caribbean after 1492.

Non-urban settlement organization and Roman expansion in the Roman Republic (4th-1st centuries BC)

Archaeologist Eduardo Herrera Malatesta reflects on the unfamiliarity with the pre-Columbian past that he encountered during fieldwork in the Montecristi province in the Dominican Republic.

Bronze Age settlement sites in the Dutch river area (c. 2000-800 BC)

In Mapping the Pāśupata Landscape: Narrative, Place, and the Śaiva Imaginary in Early Medieval North India, Elizabeth A. Cecil explores the sacred geography of the earliest community of Śiva devotees called the Pāśupatas.

In the contemporary myriad of definitions and approaches of landscape, the starting points and limits of the concept of landscape biography are being explored, but also tested in this thesis. What exactly is a landscape biography? What does it constitute of? Is landscape biography just a narration of…

Modelling supra-regional communities in the early 3rd Millennium BC

Amerindian settlement patterns and early colonial cartography in Northern Hispaniola

Landscapes of mobility in the northern Chilean altiplano: from chiefly networks to colonial markets (AD 1100-1800).

The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Jordan’s North-Eastern Desert and Beyond

The Aesernia Colonial Landscape project investigates ancient settlement patterns and dynamics around modern Isernia in Molise (Italy), the Latin colony of Aesernia (founded 263 BC). It consists of intensive systematic field survey in the territory of the colony, combined with remote sensing and geoprospection…

This project combines and reconsiders all the available evidence of the Scheurrak SO1, and use new archival databases and modern archaeological techniques to shed new light on the material culture of the Baltic grain trade and the Holland shipbuilding industry at the turn of the sixteenth century.

The Archaeology of Imperial Landscapes examines the transformation of rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires in the Near East and Mediterranean. Through a comparative approach to archaeological data, it analyses the patterns of transformation in widely differing imperial…

Assessing the effects of landscape and land-use changes on the visibility of archaeological landscapes in Central-Southern Italy.

A project to explore the configuration of different types of settlement and its role in the evolution of landscape, both in pre-Roman times and in the so-called Colonial landscape. We used several techniques of field survey, pottery classification and other non-invasive approaches to the archaeological…

Celebrating 20 years of Environmental Research and Education in Northern Cameroon

Religion in the ancient world, and ancient Egyptian religion in particular, is often perceived as static, hierarchically organised, and centred on priests, tombs, and temples. Engagement with archaeological and textual evidence dispels these beguiling if superficial narratives, however. Individuals…

ASLU 16

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world.

How has landscape and land use changed in these two case studies since independence? What has caused these changes, whether anthropogenic or natural? How do local communities in the areas of study perceive these changes? How can community knowledge be integrated with mapping tools (GIS) to contribute…

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

In several Mediterranean regions archaeological sites have been mapped by fieldwalking surveys, producing large amounts of data. These legacy site-based survey data represent an important resource to study ancient settlement organization. Methodological procedures are necessary to cope with the limits…

The research aims to understand how did Cuban and Dominican landscape encapsulate historical conceptual transformations about human –nature spiritual interaction after the Spanish conquest? More specifically, what are the present day cultural associations with Cuban and Dominican natural landscape?…

This project investigates the well-preserved agricultural terraces of the Inn valley and the evolution of resource use in the inner Alps.

On the 28th of September Go Hirasawa successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

1) How natural cycles and activities are interconnected for building the time in one community? 2) What perceptions of Ñuu Dzaui peoples about their landscape can be connected with precolonial times?

Promotor: G.R. de Snoo Co-promotor: C.J.M. Musters

What workflow of non-destructive techniques provides accurate, valuable data to improve our understanding of Caribbean archaeological landscapes? How were Amerindian settlements configured?

S.S. Kolipaka’s thesis questions and investigates the survival prospects of reintroduced tigers and their offspring’s in the human dominated landscape of Panna tiger reserve in India.

Different ways in which physical environments impacted on the cultural imagination of Greco-Roman antiquity.

The project Deconstructing Stability aims to improve reconstructions of late prehistoric landscapes and predictive models for the purpose of archaeological heritage management.

A new VICI Project led by Dr. Petra Sijpesteijn. More information on the PhD and postdoc postiions will be published soon

A new VICI Project led by Dr. Petra Sijpesteijn. The Call for 2 PhDs and a Post-Doc is out now.

Who is funding African science? How are different African and international funders interacting and contributing to develop scientific research in the continent? Are there potential inadvertent synergies among research funders that can be identified? These and similar questions are at the heart of this…

This research investigates the changing landscape and land use in two case studies of the coastal villages of St. Kitts and the Kalinago Territory of Dominica. By integrating human and ecological aspects of agrarian landscapes, this research analyzes how land degradation or land change impacts cultural…

This thesis focuses on the social dimensions of crane and wetland conservation in rural landscapes in Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

This project examines the notion of sacred fertility and sacred landscapes, associated rituals and material culture, both archaeological and ethnographic manifestations in the Horn of Africa.

Migration is the talk of the town. On the whole, however, the current situation is seen as resulting from unique political upheavals. Such a-historical interpretations ignore the fact that migration is a fundamental phenomenon in human societies from the beginning and plays a crucial role in the cultural,…

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