An experimental approach to organic palaeolithic technology

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,…

In this thesis we present several methods to automate tomographic reconstruction algorithms and several novel tomographic reconstruction algorithms with the focus on being easily applicable and efficient to use.

With tomography it is possible to reconstruct the interior of an object without destroying.

Dorothea Schulz & Martin Hense

Promotor: K.J. Batenburg

Promotor: Prof.dr. K.J. Batenburg

The chaotic years after the Civil War are often seen as a time of uniquely American idealism—a revolutionary attempt to rebuild the nation that paved the way for the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. But Adam Fairclough rejects this prevailing view, challenging prominent historians such…

An assessment of Libyan legislation

Leiden University archaeologists are reconstructing houses from the Stone Age, using only resources available during that period. This method offers surprising insights into the ingenuity of our distant ancestors, and challenges existing archaeological views.

The research in this thesis is focused on tomographic reconstruction based on two imaging modalities in electron microscopy.

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka, an indigenous language from southeastern Guatemala. The description is based on a missionary grammar that is titled Arte de la lengua szinca and was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773.

Tomography is a powerful technique to non-destructively determine the interior structure of an object.Usually, a series of projection images (e.g.\ X-ray images) is acquired from a range of different positions.

Promotor: J.P. Abrahams, Co-promotor: T. Grüne

This project intends to provide an integrated linguistic assessment of the hypothesised migration route of the Tocharians.

Promotor: H.J.A. Röttgering, Co-promotor: M. Haverkorn

Anna Scott is a Canadian pianist-researcher interested in using the early twentieth century recordings of the Brahms circle of pianists to question persistent gaps between the loci of knowledge, ethics, and act in both modern mainstream and historically-informed performances of Brahms’s late piano w…

A technique originally developed for satellite imaging can now be used to recover pictographic texts from underneath the surface of a five hundred year old Mexican manuscript.

Attitudes towards cultural heritage have long been characterised by an ‘endangerment sensibility’ concerned with preventing losses. Recently, however, critical heritage scholars have argued that loss can be generative, facilitating the formation of new values and attachments. Their arguments have focused…

What can languages spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands today tell us about the histories of its various population groups?

What kinds of vocal music were not typically transmitted in written musical notation? Can specific ‘lost’ song forms - siciliane, giustiniane, le Grechesche, gli stili “regionali“ nel canto del quattrocento - be more precisely identified than they have been until now, both in musicological research…

Female and male songbirds sing equally elaborate songs in some species, but in others, females do not sing like males or not at all. How did such pronounced differences in male and female communication evolve?

How to reconstruct the middle parts (videlicet haute-contres, tailles and quintes) from French orchestral pieces, which survived only in their reduced forms (featuring primarely dessus and continuo), according to historical examples?

Lecture, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics (CIEL) Seminars

In 2010, the remnants of a 16th century indigenous village were discovered in St. Vincent, on the construction terrain of the new International Argyle Airport.

Nine Archaeology students have built a reconstruction of an early medieval house in Vlaardingen. The house, built according to a houseplan discovered during excavations at Rotta, has already played an important role as the backdrop of the re-enactment of the battle of Vlaardingen of 1018.

An enormous number of monumental buildings, such as burial tombs, appeared in Mycenaean Greece after 1600 BC. Why did this urge to build come to an abrupt end 400 years later? Archaeologist Ann Brysbaert investigates the possible causes thanks to her ERC Consolidator Grant.

In this work the reconstruction of a tau neutrino signal in the KM3NeT detector is discussed.

We have studied shape with a particular focus on the zebrafish model system. The shape is an essential appearance of the phenotype of a biological specimen and it can be used to read out a current state or response or to study gene expression.

The Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Development and Benghazi Centre for Law and Society Studies, Benghazi University have released their final report, in English and Arabic, on Assessing Legislation for Libya’s Reconstruction.

In the civil war in Syria, the country's cultural heritage is also under threat. There have been further acts of vandalism in Palmyra and many of the city's museums have been looted. Leiden archaeologist Olivier Nieuwenhuijse's Focus Raqqa project aims to make a digital inventory of the plundered archaeology…

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…

The main purpose of this book is to give a description of the Cholón language as represented in the Arte de la lengua cholona (ALC), a colonial grammar written in 1748 by a Franciscan friar, named Pedro de la Mata. The ALC was transcribed by Fray Gerónimo Clota in 1772. This grammar is kept in the British…

Promotor: R. Tijdeman, Co-promotor: H.J.J. te Riele

On 8 July, the symposium 'The digital reconstruction of the crucifixion of the Lindau master (ca. 1425)' will take place at the auditorium of Museum Catharijnecovent, from where it will also be broadcasted online.

William Pestle and Jason Laffoon recently published a new article entitled 'Quantitative paleodietary reconstruction with complex foodwebs: An isotopic case study from the Caribbean' in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

This thesis describes the use of the evolutionary approach in the study of language change, aiming to provide a better insight in the mechanisms that play a role in language change and to validate this approach in the field of language change.

Promotores: R. Tijdeman, K.J. Batenburg

Promotores: K.J. Batenburg, B. Koren

Promotor: S.J. Edixhoven, Co-promotor: K.J. Batenburg

This study looks at the diverse phonological systems found within Central Chadic, and reconstructs the phonological system of their ancestor language.

This dissertation provides an overview of the phonological developments of the Qinghai-Gansu languages, comparing them to the reconstructed ancestral language.

HomininSpace is an agent based modelling and simulation system in which fluctuating carrying capacity is the key attractor for hominin dispersal. A parameterized and spatially explicit reconstructed palaeo-environment models available energy in the form of secondary biomass using reconstructed climate…

This dissertation assesses the influence of British Celtic on the phonological development of English during and shortly after the Anglo-Saxon settlement period, ca. AD 450-700.

PhD defence

Optical projection tomography (OPT) is a tomographic 3D imaging technique used for specimens in the millimetre scale.

This dissertation focuses on the systematic vowel alternations displayed by the Proto-Germanic n-stems. The fact is, that many of these nouns now appear to have preserved the ablaut system of the Indo-European proto-language spoken some five millennia ago. In this respect, the n-stems are truly comparable…

Promotores: Prof.dr. J.N. Kok, Prof.dr. C.A. Mandemakers, Co-Promotor: G. Bloothooft