The research programme of the Prehistoric Farming Group (European Prehistory) has several research projects. The largest and longest in terms of continuity is the Maaskant project directed by prof. dr. Harry Fokkens.

Aesthetic formations and cultural repertoires give meaning to our reality in ways that are never neutral. Focusing on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its global interlocutors, this project brings together a team of scholars from Leiden University who bring in inter-disciplinary, inter-area…

Mexico, between 500 B.C. and A.D. 900

The Mesoamerican research group 'Time in Intercultural Context: the indigenous calendars of Mexico and Guatemala' funded by the ERC and directed by prof. dr. Maarten Jansen, met up in Mexico from the 13th until the 23rd of February for a field seminar in the states of Tlaxcala and Hidalgo.

A new study published in Archaeometry describes the unexpected results obtained from analyses of five human teeth discovered in a ritual cache at an enslaved African plantation site on the island of Saba in the Caribbean.

A unique archeological find near Tombos in Northern Sudan. Archaeologist Sarah Schrader from Leiden University, working with a team of international researchers, has discovered a grave of a ritually buried horse that is over 3000 years old. Both the grave and the skeleton are in perfect condition. The…

Archaeologists from Leiden University and the municipality of Apeldoorn have excavated two prehistoric ancestral mounds dating from 300 years BC at the 'Echoput' royal estate. The findings were presented to Her Majesty Queen Beatrix on Friday 2 November.

Prof. dr. Frans Theuws has received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The 2,5 million euro grant will be used in a 5-year Archaeological study into the economic recovery of Western Europe after the demise of the Roman empire.

Volume 72 of the Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art is dedicated to the relationship of art and death in the Low Countries and its diaspora, from premodern times to the present. The editors welcome contributions on works of art and architecture (paintings, prints, sculptures, objects of applied…

Do you live in Egypt and have you always wondered about all the pharaonic heritage surrounding you? This spring NVIC organizes a beginner’s level, introductory course in Egyptology. In 6 richly illustrated lessons, the history of ancient Egypt will be brought to life, both chronologically as well as…

Jelle van Buuren, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, appeared as guest on VICE to discuss the usefulness of recent ban on QAnon.

Stijn Bussels will attend the two-day conference on The Tableau Vivant – Across Media, History, and Culture at the Colombia University of New York. He will deliver a paper on ‘‘Restored Behaviour’ and the Performance of the City Maiden in Joyous Entries into Antwerp’.

The European Research Council has awarded an Advanced Grant to Prof. dr. Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen for the research project

The Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference was founded in 2013 to publish a selection of the best papers presented at the biennial LUCAS Graduate Conference, an international and interdisciplinary humanities conference organized by the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). The…

Join-in courses are MA-courses in medieval topics given in set MA-programs of the six participant universities of the Research School. On request, such courses are accessible to MA-students from other (Dutch) universities. Course loads and number of credit points to be obtained are usually between 5…

Lecture

Congratulations to David Fontijn, who has been recognized by the University with the title of full Professor of the Archaeology of Early Europe.

From 12 – 16 May, prof. Fokkens and five RMA students (Kiki de Bondt, Jordy Aal, Mette Langbroek, Gwendolynn de Groote and Bastiaan Steffens) visited Cambridge for a two-day workshop with prof. Marie Louise Sørensen, staff and students of Cambridge University, and a number of the members of the Cambridge…

Between 1798 and 1813 successive regimes attempted to enforce a fundamental geographical and administrative redivision of the Netherlands. The provinces that had been sovereign states within the Republic of the United Netherlands for over two centuries were dissolved and replaced by ‘departments’, subordinate…

Diplomatica: A Journal of Diplomacy and Society addresses the broad range of work being done across the social sciences and the humanities that takes diplomacy as its focus of investigation.

Past objects offer a wealth of information about life in earlier times. Loe Jacobs is an expert in making earthenware objects, using the same methods and means used in earlier times.

Considering Mesoamerican Precolonial books as material objects

To understand which groups turn against their government, you need to understand the political culture in which they grew up, what they expect from a ‘state’ and what alternatives there are. With its long interdisciplinary experience, ASCL is often considered to be a regional expertise centre. But this…

At LUCIS we offer a varied programme of scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops) which reflect our multidisciplinary and comparative view on Islam and Muslim societies in past and present.

One of the three long-term research interests of our group concerns the Transformation of the Roman World (c AD 450-900).

Together with members of indigenous communities Leiden researchers preserve and disseminate philosophical, historical and medical knowledge.

Maarten Jansen, professor emeritus at the Faculty of Archaeology, was appointed as Distinguished Emeritus Professor for two years at the University of Bonn. In this position, Jansen, a world-renowned specialist on ancient Mexican pictorial manuscripts, will further expand upon the long-standing collaboration…

During the 2019 Reuvensdagen, PhD candidate Femke Lippok was awarded the prestigious W.A. van Es-prize for her research master’s thesis The Pyre and the Grave, written in 2017. The jury lauded Femke for her pioneering work and making use of big data analysis, while adding an admirably expansive and…

On 1 February 2014 the second issue of the Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference, titled 'Death: Ritual, Representation and Remembrance', was published.

On November 25, Dr Araceli Rojas presented her book El tiempo y la sabiduría: un calendario sagrado entre los ayöök de Oaxaca. The event took place in the Central Public Library of the State of Oaxaca, in the heart of Oaxaca City, at 7 pm.

Some 5000 years ago the people of the corded ware culture exchanged ideas about death on a continental scale. There were strong gender differences in these ideas: men were buried in an international style, and women in a local style. This discovery was made by archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois.

Ron Sela, Associate Professor of Central Asian History in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 19 until 25 May 2017. Ron Sela will deliver a guest lecture and a master class within the Central Asia Initiative…

The Upper and Lower Houses of the Dutch Parliament are struggling with how tolerance should best be interpreted. As a result, the freedom in the Netherlands for people who hold alternative views is diminishing. This is Floris Mansvelt Beck’s conclusion on the basis of his PhD research. Defence on 2…

Ron Sela, Associate Professor of Central Asian History in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington, will be the Central Asia Visiting Professor from 19 until 25 May 2017. Ron Sela will deliver a guest lecture and a master class within the Central Asia Initiative…

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

The Roosevelt Chair in New Diplomatic History is sponsored by the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS) in Middelburg, and the new position further strengthens the connection between the RIAS and Leiden.

Archaeologist Mike Field spent his summer holiday riding in the toughest horse race in the world, the Mongol Derby: 1,000km in ten days across the Mongolian steppe, following in the footsteps of the Genghis Khan’s messengers. Field was thrown from his horse twice but managed to make it to the finish…

Leiden’s beadle, Willem van Beelen, is retiring on 29 February. How does he look back on his career and what do those in the know have to say about him?

To what extent is the image of the Taino settlements on Hispaniola representative for the whole island, or is it only related to a few large settlements of known caciques?

This research project, that started in September 2008, aims to explore how personal and public memories of the Dutch Revolt in the seventeenth century evolved and interacted to create new political and cultural identities for the societies that eventually were to become the kingdoms of the Netherlands…

Michiel Pronk defended his thesis on 30 March 2016

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…

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…

Lecture, Johan Picardt Mini Symposium

Conference, Workshop

At the VIth Monte Albán Round Table conference (July 2011) in Oaxaca, Mexico, Maarten Jansen (Leiden University) together with Mexican archaeologists Dante García and Iván Rivera (both from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia) discussed the topography and toponyms of the archaeological…