Conference

This research project of the Catholic University of Leuven was created in 1976 by Professor Dr Pierre Vermeersch, who assumed its direction until 2003. The present director is Professor Dr Philip Van Peer.

A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean

Papers presented at a colloquium, held in honour of Professor Dr. P.J.R. Modderman, Leiden, 3-7 May 1982.

This volume of Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia focuses on how local communities in prehistory define themselves in relation to a bigger social world.

Lecture, What did you do last summer?

In this research I assess the impact of the recently discovered gas reserves south off Cyprus on the escalation of the Cyprus conflict.

Since the adoption of agriculture people have cultivated fields. The project concerns all kinds of aspects related to raising crops.

Balikh Valley Archaeological Project Monograph 1 - BAR International Series 468

Did early farmers deliberately use animal manure on their fields?

There’s a Stone Age house at Broekpolder, near the city of Vlaardingen. It wasn’t built by prehistoric people but by modern archaeologists from Leiden University and volunteers from a local initiative known as Broekpolder Federation. They used replicas of Stone Age tools, such as stone axes and chisels…

How do archaeologists test ideas about the evolution of the modern brain? Veni-researcher Geeske Langejans and then Master student Paul Kozowyk (Leiden University) prepared different Prehistoric glue recipes and tested these for strength in modern test machines at the Delft University of Technology.

The Dutch TV programme Keuringsdienst van Waarde investigated the origin of BBQ taste. Prehistoric fire expert Andrew Sorensen was invited to explain prehistoric fire making techniques.

On October 7th the Department of Law at the University of Cyprus hosted a conference on company law titled: Cross-borders Mergers Directive: EU Perspectives and National Experiences. Professor Steef Bartman (Institute of Private Law, Department of Company Law) was invited to deliver the keynote address…

Investigating the emergence of complex societies in Chalcolithic Cyprus.

Archaeologists often use the percentages of heat-affected stone or bone artifacts found at archaeological sites as a way to determine how frequently fire was used by the inhabitants. Andrew Sorensen and Fulco Scherjon have come up with a computer model called 'fiReproxies' to simulate how fires used…

After 30 days of work, the experimental reconstruction of the iron age canoe of Vlaardingen Vergulde Hand is finished! Its maiden voyage will take place on Friday the 16th of February when it will be paddled for the first time by schoolchildren from Vlaardingen.

Dean prof. Willem Willems has visited Japan from 8-10 September, at the invitation of the Aomori District Council in northern Honshu. Purpose of the visit was to provide assistance in the nomination process for World Heritage Site of 15 prehistoric Jomon Culture sites in northern Honshu and Hokkaido…

Within the space of a few months, the Heritage Quest citizen science project, whereby volunteers scan elevation maps of the Veluwe area for burial mounds and other prehistoric remains, has already led to groundbreaking new insights. Hundreds of burial mounds have been found, as have a huge number of…

Authors: Pierre-Bruno Ruffini and Olga Krasnyak

For decades, scholars have wondered about the development and dissemination of languages around the world. What are the odds that peoples living thousands of miles apart speak varieties of Indo-European languages that are closely related? This riddle has now partly been solved thanks to an international…

The Faculty of Archaeology has a long research tradition in the municipality of Oss. Since 1974, researchers and students have been carrying out archaeological research here. In Januari 2019, an enormous replica of one of the top local finds was unveiled standing in the middle of a roundabout.

Close contact between women and dogs in prehistoric times Women and dogs were in close contact in the neolithic age of hunters-fishers-gatherers. This has been suggested by Leiden osteoarchaeologist Dr Andrea Waters-Rist and fellow researchers who have studied a tiny biological fossil. The fossil was…

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.

In the largest study of ancient DNA ever conducted, an international team of scientists has revealed the complex story behind one of the defining periods in European prehistory. The study is published this week in the journal Nature.

In 2018, Sorensen’s research into the fire-making habits of the Neanderthals reached the headlines all over the world. Now, a Veni grant will enable him to continue his fire-related investigation, focusing more on our own distant ancestors.

Building a fire involves many variables, such as size, choice of fuel, temperature, and burn time, that affect the way the generated heat can be used, and therefore the potential function of a fire. A group of Leiden archaeologists are, together with a team of international colleagues, investigating…

Over the years, many spectacular archaeological finds have been washed ashore on the Dutch coast. Among these a large assemblage of barbed points made of bone and antler from the Mesolithic (11,000-8000 BC). The species used by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to manufacture their barbed points remained…

Archaeologist Quentin Bourgeois received an NWO Vidi grant to investigate the emergence of a pan-European culture in the third millennium BC. ‘We see ideas being shared across the entire continent in pre-literate societies. And not only that, for a thousand years, the same cultural ideas persist.’

This dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus and aims to demonstrate how socialist parties in Greece and Turkey struggled with the concept of the “nation” in battling for power and political positioning…

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.

If all goes according to plan, Vasileios Karakasis will successfully defend his dissertation on Thursday 15 October. This will not only be a milestone for Vasileios, but also for the Dual PhD Centre (DPC).

A very special occasion for the Dual PhD Centre. Vasileios P. Karakasis is the 25th PhD candidate in the history of the Dual PhD Centre, combining work with PhD research at Leiden University. Karakasis will defend his dissertation: ‘Adding Fuel to the Conflict’ on 15 October. In this interview, he discusses…

Archaeological research of coastal farming communities on the southern North Sea coast, 2000-800 BC

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…

Cultural identity at the Late Prehistoric settlement of Aguas Buenas, Nicaragua, AD 500-1522

Case-studies on use-wear analysis of prehistoric flint tools

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

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

ASLU 11

Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies 21, 2005

The physical landscape is the setting in which human activities take place. Landscape and site context during human occupation is one of the areas of concern for the geoarchaeologist. A detailed stratigraphical study -both on- and off-site- clearly enhances the interpretation of the archaeologists,…

Four studies on its prehistoric occupation and Holocene geology. With a contribution by Agatha S. Knip, Late Neolithic Skeleton Finds from Molenaarsgraaf (Z.H.).

This dissertation investigates the impressive prehistoric cultivated landscape of the eastern part of West Frisia.

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