The Leiden Ancient History specialization concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors. The appearance of these empires led to the development of an interaction network…

How did ancient Greeks and Romans regard work?

Whether implicitly or explicitly, we all have ideas about how the law is supposed to function, whose interests it should represent, and what role it should play in society. This project explores the ways in which these questions are addressed in the works of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus…

The Animated Image addresses the entire range of contexts in which images were described by Roman authors as being animated, as well as the accounts that Roman writers produced to explain the animation of inanimate matter.

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 1

What was the nature of the urban network in the Roman provinces of Germania Superior, Raetia and Noricum and how stood this in relation with economic and social developments?

The principle aim of the project is to study the genesis and the quantitative properties of the Early Roman urban network of the Balkan and the Danube provinces.

The ancient Roman province of Lusitania, more or less contemporary Portugal, has been the focus of a joint research project by Leiden University, Évora University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. The research project has now been provided with a new boost by a large Regato grant managed…

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 4

How did the imperial administration of justice function during the reign of the Severans?

This publication by Cornelis van Tilburg, will be published at Sidestone Press on September 28, 2022. It discusses various aspects of city gates in the Western Roman Empire: Italy, Spain, Gaul, Germany and Britain.

For the past 2 years, Dr Letty ten Harkel has been jointly running an excavation project of a suspected Roman villa site on the Balearic island of Mallorca with colleagues Dr Antoni Puig Palerm and Ritchie Kolvers, MA. The project was recently awarded a LUF Chastelain-Nobach fund to explore the extend…

Aetiologies seem to gratify the human desire to understand the origin of a phenomenon. However, as this book demonstrates, aetiologies do not exclusively explore origins.

The Leiden Ancient History specialization concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors.

This project aims to integrate three of the largest survey databases in the Mediterranean to study the impact of the megalopolis Rome on its direct hinterland.

Located in the small Kingdom of Commagene at the upper Euphrates, the late Hellenistic monument of Nemrud Daǧ (c. 50 BC) has been undeservedly neglected by scholars

Through the Chastelain-Nobach LUF fund, Classical and Mediterranean archaeologist Tymon de Haas has received a grant for his research on the ecological impact of Roman expansion. He will use this grant to further expand on the case-study that was made possible by the Byvanck LUF fund earlier this ye…

An environmental and palaeo-economic reconstruction.

Lecture, Global Questions Seminar

This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches to the economic history of Pompeii, and the role of the Pompeian evidence in debates about the Roman economy.

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 2

ASLU 28 Michalis Karambinis (2015)

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 3

In this publication the results of the analyses of the Roman harbour of Voorburg-Arentsburg (NL) are presented. This fully inclusive and integrated study of more than 1000 pages is published in two volumes. The publication is written in Dutch, but has got an extensive synthesis/summary in English.

This research project analyses the use of different, often competing, stereotypical images of Rome in Humanist Latin Poetry, by considering it as strategic appropriation of the classical heritage.

Ineke Smit defended her thesis on 17 September 2019

As part of the VIDI 'Cultural innovation in a globalising society: Egypt in the Roman world', this research explores manifestations of Egypt in the material culture of Augustan Rome. This period was a crucial turning point for the urban landscape of Rome, which was characterised by cultural diversit…

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

Looking for a different approach in the ongoing discussions on the ethereal matter of Romanisation, Ana Zora Maspoli joined Miguel John Versluys’ research group as a postdoc guest researcher. While she has been active in our Faculty since February 2022, you may not have met her yet due to the Covid-19…

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

This project focuses on urban commercial space in Roman Italy and deals with the impact of economic growth on urban communities in the late Republic and the Imperial period (200 BCE – 300 CE).

Modern receptions of Graeco-Roman Antiquity are important ideological markers of the ways we envisage our own twenty-first-century societies. An urgent topic of study is: what kinds of narratives – sometimes controversial – about Antiquity do people create for themselves at this moment in time, and…

This research develops and applies a new approach to study Aegyptiaca Romana from a bottom-up, Roman perspective.

Subproject of

'Communal Dining in in the Roman West' explores why the practice of privately sponsored communal dining gained popularity in certain parts of the Western Roman Empire for almost 300 years.

To what end and how does Plautus constantly underline the Helleni(sti)c provenance of his art? How does this aspect relate the author’s originality?

This PhD-research is conducted to test the hypothesis that Gutenberg and consorts developed a standardised and even unitised system for the production of textura type, and that this system was extrapolated for the production of roman type in Renaissance Italy.

This monograph by dr. Kim Beerden compares Greek divination to divinatory practices in Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia and Republican Rome.

The department of World Archaeology combines research and education about regions all over the world, from Human Origins to the Middle Ages, and from Europe, to Asia, Africa and the America’s. That broad range in time and space makes the department a dynamic pluriform community with many different approaches,…

Ady Roxburgh has been awarded a two-year grant to continue his research into the choices behind the composition of Roman, copper-alloy artefacts. The Estonian Research Council has awarded him a fully funded Mobilitas Pluss postdoctoral grant. The Evaluation Committee decided to fund the first 5 applications…

Shining a new light on the Roman world

Rural cult places were of central importance in the non-urbanised areas of ancient Samnium, in central southern Italy. Their development, roles and functions in ancient society, however, remain important research questions. New excavations at one of these sanctuaries, the rural temple of S. Giovanni…

Publication on the excavations at Roman fort Matilo in Leiden

As Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS-KNAW) fellow, Tesse Stek will explore the intricate relationship between the history of ideas about Roman imperialism and contemporary archaeological interpretation.

Proceedings of the Vth International Conference of Isis Studies, Boulogne-sur-Mer, October 13-15, 2011

This volume offers an innovative analysis of Roman political culture in Italy from the first to the sixth century AD on the basis of seven case studies.