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…

Caspar Reuvens, the world’s first Professor of Archaeology, was a prominent classical scholar and from his appointment in 1818 onwards Classical & Mediterranean Archaeology has been an important field of research in Leiden.

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.

The Case of the Painted Plaster

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…

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 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.

From Crisis to Critique

The Western Mediterranean is a key region to understand human dispersal events within and out of the African continent as well as for the eventual replacement of Neanderthals by anatomically modern humans during the Pleistocene. Central to any conclusive interpretation of archaeological and palaeoclimatic…

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Byzantine and Ottoman Archaeology, Amsterdam, 21-23 October 2011

Pre-modern long-distance trade was fraught with risks which often created conflicts of interest. The ensuing disputes and the ways the actors involved dealt with them belong to the field of conflict management.

This edited volume by Jeff Fynn-Paul pushes forward the debate on the role of entrepreneurs in making war and building states in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

Authority and Control in the Countryside looks at the economic, religious, political and cultural instruments that local and regional powers in the late antique to early medieval Mediterranean and Near East used to manage their rural hinterlands.

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.

Sarah van der Kwast

Just off the coast of Libya, aid organisations try to rescue boat migrants. The confiscation of one of the rescue ships shows how important but difficult it is for aid organisations to remain neutral, independent and impartial, says Eugenio Cusumano.

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…

The Iseum Campense, the impressive sanctuary for Isis and the Egyptian gods on the Campus Martius and arguably one of ancient Rome’s most notable absent presences, is a monument central to various debates.

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…

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

Mediterranean archaeologist Dr Anita Casarotto has been awarded a grant of € 5,800 from the Byvanck Fonds for her research on unlocking important data for regional archaeological investigations in the Mediterranean. In collaboration with Leiden University and the KNIR (Royal Netherlands Institute in…

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…

Archaic and Classical architectural terracottas constituted an integral part of the architecture of monumental buildings at Akragas. These objects therefore provide unique insights into the built environment of sanctuaries at this important Greek colony in Sicily. This research's multi-disciplinary…

Two years after the first conference, the Napels based Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Polymers, together with a consortium of organisations and research institutes, organised the second conference from 15 to 18 September in Capri, Italy.

This new handbook by Frits Naerebout and Henk Singor places the history of the Greeks and Romans within the larger context of the contemporary Eurasian world.

The journey of sugar from east to west

Spatial analysis on the basis of material culture has always been one of the major topics in archaeological research. Designating Place analyses the urban space of Roman Ostia and Pompeii in different ways, namely via geophysical analysis, spatial analysis, iconographic analysis and epigraphic analy…

Lecture

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

The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion and art from Antiquity to the present. This volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on Egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of…

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…

In summer 2018 classical archaeologist Hanna Stöger passed away. At that moment she was in the midst of several cutting-edge research projects on the use of space in the Roman city of Ostia. To make sure that her groundbreaking work would not go unpublished, long-time colleagues Hans Kamermans and Bouke…

This network brings together scholars whose work explores how contemporary frameworks of crisis produce experiences of the present, rehash or disrupt established narratives of the past, and broker specific outlooks on the future. We collaborate in studying these crisis-scapes and exploring how they…