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…

Within the broader research theme Town and Country which unites the Classical, Mediterranean and Near Eastern Archaeology Department, the Classical-Mediterranean staff and PhDs are active in a wide number of regions and periods of the Circum-Mediterranean lands.

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 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…

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…

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

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…

ASLU 16

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

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

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

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

Amerindian settlement patterns and early colonial cartography in Northern Hispaniola

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

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.

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

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

In the first half of the 20th century, hundreds of burial mounds in the Netherlands have been investigated. Many questions, however, are still unanswered. The barrow landscapes project tackles a number of these questions by re-investigating finds from excavations stored in museums with new methods and…

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?

The Wadi al Jizzi Archaeological Project is a systematic and long term archaeological surface survey project, investigating the rich archaeological heritage of the Wadi al Jizzi region (Oman) from the Paleolithic until the early Modern period.

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

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.

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…

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

Built Environment and Domestic Material Culture in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Cyclades, Greece (13th – 20th Centuries AD)

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

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…

The Near East, situated at the nexus of Europe, Africa, and Asia, was central to the development of ancient societies in all three continents.

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of the Mediterranean, deepening your understanding of this fascinating region. From the many faces of ‘Hellenism’ to the early rise of the Roman Republic, to the voyages of European Crusaders in medieval times. The archaeology…

ASLU 11

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

Alternatives to current practice

Since 2013, the National Natural History Museum of the Netherlands, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, is unearthing the largest bonebed of the horned dinosaur Triceratops discovered so far. In order to answer questions about sedimentology, taphonomy and palaeobiology, palaeontologists and geologists collaborated…

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

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.

This computational approach to the complexity of text comprehension is useful for describing the cognitive processes involved.

The researchers and students at the Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society at the Faculty of Archaeology study the role of the past in modern societies. They want to find out more about the relationships between the past and the present, and the role that heritage plays.

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

Past, Present and Future of Nubian Communities in Sudan

The Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in society, and how heritage can contribute to the improving quality of life and our (future) environment.

Prehistoric burial mounds are still ubiquitous in the Northwest European landscape, but not much is known on the landscape they were part of, nor on what preceded them.

Digital Archaeology is concerned with digital data for for archaeological research, and the computational methods and tools required to collect, analyse and manage it.

Current status and future prospects

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…