A biographical approach to material cultural interactions between Caribbean communities and Europeans across the historical divide (AD 1000-1800)

Tracing the residues of Neolithic activities through the study of stone artefacts

Material Crossovers

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.

Brandon Zicha (Leiden University College The Hague) had always been critical of the teaching system at universities. But it was only when he passed the Senior Teaching Qualification at the end of last year that he was able to explain exactly what was wrong with it.

The documentary invites us to consider the question of what we consider valuable knowledge. “We need to realise that doing and thinking are intertwined in ways we did not comprehend before” argues Maikel Kuijpers, archaeologist and the producer of the documentary. “This will have consequences for the…

In order for the economy to become sustainable, a shift in how we think about production is required. Archaeologists Maikel Kuijpers and Catalin Popa, together with international business expert Jochem Kroezen, wrote an article on the principles of a different sort of production: craft production. They…

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.

Basketry, cordage and textiles made of plant fibers or bark are rarely preserved in the archaeological record. By means of experimental archaeology and microwear analysis, we obtain indirect evidence about this important craft.

Inaugural Lecture

An Investigation into the role of copper-alloy craft production in the early medieval economy of northwest Europe.

A multi-disciplinary approach to past lifestyles and cultural practices

A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean

A dental anthropological approach to foodways, health and disease, and crafting in the pre-Columbian Caribbean.

This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.

Metalworking Skill and Material Specialization in Early Bronze Age Central Europe

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

Over the last decades, the systematic investigation of urban settlements in Central-Tyrrhenian Italy led to the discovery of a growing number of contexts revealing both direct and indirect evidence of artisanal workshops. Such research commitment has yielded a vast amount of new data that greatly contribute…

Lecture

On 9 June 2020, Maral Darouei defended her thesis 'Managing a sustainable career in the contemporary world of work: Personal choices and contextual challenges'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.I. van der Rest.

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…

Dr Kim Duistermaat (NVIC) en Niels Groot (TU Delft)

Lecture

A marvelous mosaic synagogue floor has been discovered at the Israeli excavation site of Horvat Kur. The timeworn stones of the mosaic clearly form the name ‘El’azar’. Leiden University researcher Jürgen Zangenberg and a group of Leiden students played a role in the excavation. ‘El’azar was likely an…

The present study aims to establish and develop guidelines for effective use of the classical guitar’s scoring potential.

Although the guitar has been part of the classical music tradition for centuries, writing for the guitar remains a formidable challenge for many composers. Where orchestral instruments have a long history of scoring guides that help composers develop their craft, the number of studies dedicated to guitar…

The Uses of Justice in Global Perspective, 1600–1900 presents a new perspective on the uses of justice between 1600 and 1900 and confronts prevailing Eurocentric historiography in its examination of how people of this period made use of the law.

Providing a valuable overview of regionalism throughout the entire continent, Regionalism in Modern Europe combines both geographical and thematic approaches to examine the origins and development of regional movements and identities in Europe from 1890 to the present.

How are contemporary art practices from Southeast Asia negotiating notions of art and tradition?

Vol. V, Sections 1-2

On 18 December 2019, Mikhail Antonov defended his thesis 'Formalism, Realism and Conservatism in Russian Law'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. W.B. Simons.

There's a whole lot to discover and experience in nature. But children who grow up in the city are seeing less and less greenery. During the Out and About! days junior school pupils will be going on a green expedition in their neighbourhood.

Ms. Monica Klasing Chen defended her thesis on 16 December 2020

Lecture

In the Special Issue of Matatu: “Power to the People?” Patronage, Intervention and Transformation in African Performative Artspaper, Annachiara Raia seeks to investigate the manifold relationships between traditional and contemporary, oral and written Swahili poetry, in the utendi and mashairi forms…

Visual ethnographic research into development-projects or practices of embodiment

The Case of the Painted Plaster

From William Shakespeare to Marilynne Robinson, A Literary History of Reconciliation is the first study to examine representations of interpersonal reconciliation in work of literature across a long-term period, from the early seventeenth century to the present day, focusing on how these representations…

The focus of this programme is the inter-community social relationships and transformations of island networks in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide.

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.

This study examines recovery planning committees across Japan's Tohoku region.

We live in a world of things and people in the past must have been as closely entangled with their material surroundings as we are now. In the Laboratory for Artefact Studies Van Gijn takes a close look at the biographies of objects: what kind of raw material an object is made off and what is its provenience,…

The goal of this book is to place architectural studies, in which people’s interactions with each other and material resources are key, at the crossing of both landscape studies and material culture studies, where it belongs.

Arts and leisure , Arts and leisure

Multiple identities of elites and ‘commoners’ viewed through the lens of crafting from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean

On May 17th, Arthur Crucq succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Arthur on this great result.