Edited by Dr. S. Arnoldussen and Prof. dr. H. Fokkens

The central research theme will be the way in which Bronze Age communities used and structured their environment. In order to approach such a broad theme, we have formulated the following four interrelated fields of interest. They are of importance to each of the individual studies that we distinguish…

The handbook is a wide-ranging survey of a crucial period in prehistory during which many social, economic, and technological changes took place. Written by specialists in the field, the book provides coverage both of the themes that characterise the period, and of the specific developments that took…

The Case of the Painted Plaster

This project explored the role of material culture, in casu painted plaster and its technologies, in expressing dynamic social identities and in forging complex interwoven human relationships in the context of the Middle to Late Bronze Age of the Aegean and East Mediterranean.

The article investigates the origins of Indo-European languages in Asia by 65 coupling ancient genomics to archaeology and linguistics.

Numerous beads and pendants of amber, jet and bone have been found in Dutch Neolithic and Bronze Age context, both in settlements and in graves. Because ornaments are personal items, they are closely linked with people’s identity.

In January 2015, during an excavation ahead of a road-building project in the west of the Netherlands, archaeologists from the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden, ARCHOL BV and ADC Archeoprojects recovered an extraordinary set of Bronze Age artefacts.

ASLU 7 - A.E. de Hingh

In tracing intra-site, local and regional craft networks in Late Bronze Age Tiryns (Greece) the project aimed to understand technological changes, (dis)continuities and social practices from the Late Palatial until the Post Palatial periods in Mycenaean Greece.

Prof. David Fontijn’s Economies of Destruction team was invited by Museum Midtjylland to participate in this year’s excavation in Boest, Jutland (Denmark). The exceptional site of Boest includes burial mounds, an alignment and depositions, consisting of axes, spearheads and rings, dating to the Bronze…

The Faculty of Archaeology has appointed Dr Marie Louise Sørensen as Professor in Bronze Age Studies in the European Prehistory research group from 1st September 2012. Prof. Sørensen is a Reader in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge (Fellow of Jesus College).

The role of domestic and wild resource exploitation in Bronze Age subsistence

People in the Early Bonze Age used bronze artefacts as a means of payment. This is the conclusion reached by archaeologists Maikel Kuijpers and Catalin Popa in a PLOS ONE article published on 20 January. The discovery led to a surge of media reports.

Professor David Fontijn is fascinated by the question why people destroy objects that are dear to them. It is a phenomenon that you find everywhere in the world, gaining particular strength in the European Bronze Age. Fontijn wrote a book on this ‘economy of destruction’, published by Routledge.

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

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

How the systematic destruction of valuables created value in Bronze Age Europe, c. 2300-500 BC

Livestock was already transported over long distances in the Bronze Age Netherlands. That is what researchers from Leiden University and VU Amsterdam have discovered. Publication in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The Ra’s al-jinz project tackles economic diversification and social complexity in non-urban societies, from the perspective of Eastern Arabia, by exploring the Early Bronze Age settlement of Ra’s al-jinz RJ-3.

The first decade of excavations at Oss

D. Fontijn, Quentin Bourgeois & Arjan Louwen (eds) (2012). This publication describes the history of “barrow landscape” near Echoput in Apeldoorn. Two burial mounds were examined and it became clear that our prehistoric predecessors carefully managed and maintained the open area for a long time, before…

January 1st 2017, Bastiaan Steffens will be taking up the Graduate Teaching Assistance PhD position at the Archaeology and Ancient History department at Leicester University.

What can the composition and arrangement of urnfield graves tell us about the social and ideological believes of the urnfield period societies?

The excavation of three Bronze Age barrows and surrounding landscape at Apeldoorn-Wieselseweg

How did people in the latter part of the Late Bronze Age organize themselves in order to be able to erect massive structures such as tholos tombs, citadels and how did they interact with these materials and circumstances while constructing? What impact did such a changing landscape have on their day-to-day…

A biographical approach to stone and bone tools in the Rhine/Meuse delta from Late Mesolithic to Bronze Age

The emergence of metalwork deposition during the Bronze Age in Northwest Europe, c. 2300-1500 BC

A retrospective impact assessment of human and environmental resource usage in Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Monumental Architecture, Greece

Lecture

Reconstructing Hegemonic Practices of the Middle Assyrian Empire at the Late Bronze Age Fortified Estate of Tell Sabi Abyad, Syria, ca. 1230 – 1180 BC

The ability to create objects and structures with our hands has been essential to human development. This ability is something modern society is at risk of losing. Leiden archaeologists gather knowledge about ancient processes of ‘making and creating’ over the centuries, knowledge that helps our current…

Nathalie Brusgaard has won second prize (€ 2.000) in the Leiden University Thesis Prizes 2015 with her thesis 'The Social Significance of Cattle in Bronze Age North-Western Europe'.

Lecture

As a result of an increased life expectancy, more people suffer from chronic diseases and discomfort. Elderly patients may have multiple diseases simultaneously, with concomitant multiple medications.

Lecture, Science in Archaeology Lunch Talks

Lecture, Louwe Kooijmans lecture