Professor of Archaeometry Patrick Degryse analyses archaeological finds using techniques from chemistry, physics and biology. He will give his inaugural lecture on 19 February. He reflects on three interesting propositions from his lecture.

The archaeology of food is in all sorts of ways ‘hot’. To illustrate this, recently the book Medieval MasterChef was published, focusing on cuisine and foodways in the Mediterranean and north-western Europe during Medieval and Post-Medieval times.

The Faculty of Archaeology's own home-grown journal Inter-Section has released a new volume. Inter-Section offers students and PhD candidates the unique chance to publish in a peer-reviewed journal. Karel Kuipers and Tullio Abruzzese contributed to the new volume.

In Leiden University's video series on Leiden and The Hague as student cities, students interview each other at their favorite spots. In the fifth video of this series, archaeology student Julia spoke with Anthropology student Daria in Trianon, on Leiden's cinemas.

Leiden Asia Centres

This project aims to revisit the ways in which religious minorities in the Middle East participated in, contributed to, and opposed the Arab nationalism of the post-war years, when the British and French ruled the region via the Mandates. Research question: How did religious minorities in the Middle…

Olivier Nieuwenhuijse, project leader of the project Focus Raqqa, was hosted by the NOS Radio 1 news broadcast on February 16, 2017.

A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe is a two-volume project, authored by an international team of researchers, and offering the first-ever synthetic overview of the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe.

Physicists, including Dorothea Samtleben from Leiden University, are building a giant underwater telescope to unravel the origin of neutrinos and to solve the mystery surrounding dark matter. The first detector has now been installed. Once it is finished, the telescope will be three cubic kilometres…

How did free agents oppose the monopolies held by the VOC and WIC in court?

The combination of global questions and a wide range of local sources characterizes the Leiden University Institute for History.

The goal is to establish an intuitive search and querying service that allows researchers to quickly retrieve the most valuable digital resources, in order to allow them to integrate and synthesise the results into a coherent narrative of the past. The current focus of the project is to implement…

This volume sees the publication of fifty-six early Old Babylonian letters from ca. 1880 BCE. They were found by legendary Iraqi archaeologist Taha Baqir in 1941 at the site of Tell ed-Dēr, ancient Sippar-Amnānum, in central Iraq.

The new blog Afro-Asian Visions showcases new and ongoing research on Afro-Asian interactions through networks of artists, intellectuals, technical experts, and activists. It is designed as an online magazine.

When following a course on archaeology of the Crusaders, five archaeology students were presented the unique opportunity to create a small exhibition at the National Museum of Antiquities. The coronavirus situation made a complex task even more challenging. ‘We had to work through the lockdown with…

What holds people together and what makes them willing to fit within larger political structures? Our project examines this question in the practices of dynastic rulership in Eurasia ca. 1300-1800.

HOME will search for a diversity of Palaeolithic shelters during the Late Pleistocene through informed systematic surveys and excavations of archaeological sites in East-Central Europe.

Archaeology can help us reflect critically on our European identity. This is what David Fontijn will claim in his inaugural lecture on 18 March.

Below you can find lists of Leiden-based and international organizations working on Central Asia, and an overview of useful resources on Central Asia.

Recently Professor Joanita Vroom’s book Feeding the Byzantine City was published by the prominent academic publishing house Brepols. This volume is the fifth in a series called Medieval and Post-Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology, of which she is the editor. ‘This series aims to offer new perspectives…

This afternoon workshop on 26 November (15.00-17.00) hosted by Radboud University aims to explore the role of charitable institutions in the social history of the late antique and early medieval Mediterranean. Programme: 15:00-15:30 Joost Snaterse (Radboud University) Welcome and introduction; 15:30-16:15…

With the departure of Tesse Stek to the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome for three years, Andrzej Antczak will take over the role of Departmental Head for World Archaeology in September 2018. We spoke with him to learn more about his background, ideas, and plans for the future.

Elizabeth Hicks won first runner-up in the Netherlands Institute of the Near East (NINO) MA thesis 2021 competition at the end of January.

From 26 to 29 September 2017 the International Conference on Microplastic Pollution in the Mediterranean Sea was held.

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

The Van Loon project sets out to safeguard the archives of Dutch archaeologist Maurits van Loon (Amsterdam, September 22, 1923 - Montpellier, October 12, 2006) and make them accessible for further study.

200 years ago, in 1818, Caspar Reuvens was appointed Professor in Archaeology at Leiden University. This was effectively the start of the academic study of archaeology in the Netherlands. To celebrate this occasion, the faculty organises events related to the future of archaeology throughout the yea…

Dutch archaeologists are making three-dimensional virtual reconstructions of archaeological objects lost in the Syrian civil war.

Essays in Honour of Olivier P. Nieuwenhuyse

Dr Bleda Düring deemed it was time for an archaeological approach on the imperialisation of Assyria. ‘While there are lot of archaeological studies of Assyrian sites, they are not really trying to address this broader picture of imperialism and how this imperialisation actually worked.’ These imperialisation…

In Sri Lanka, a prominent Singhalese Buddhist monk publicly proclaims that it is not a sin to kill Tamils. In Japan, the family register kept in a Buddhist temple and specifying the outcaste status of a lineage is provided to private detectives investigating the marriageability of a young woman. Throughout…

The Villa Son Sard archaeological project aims to determine the boundaries of the Roman and post-Roman villa at Son Sard on Mallorca. While the team was excavating in the summer of 2023, several news outlets covered the findings.

This project aims to contribute to the improvement of documentation and archiving standards (conform the FAIR principles) for systematic Mediterranean archaeological field survey.

This volume considers the military architecture and its impact on local communities in Rome's eastern frontier, which stretched from the north-east shore of the Black Sea to the Red Sea.

On Friday 2 October journalist Sander van Hoorn starts his lecture series ‘The Middle East doesn't exist’, which was organised by the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS). ‘If all goes well, people will understand the Middle East that bit less after my lectures.’

From 2020 to 2023, Professor Miguel John Versluys and his research group will participate in an international consortium co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union in the framework of the international project “Alexandria: (Re)activating Common Urban Imaginaries”. This ERC project…

In a creative assignment as a part of the bachelor's course Visual Culture, students explored the impact and complexity of visual culture by means of visual culture. The resulting artworks were of such a high quality that it was decided to present these in an exhibition.