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.

The research master’s programme in Archaeology is the most diverse in the Netherlands. Benefit from our extensive experience and international reputation in archaeological research, and lay the best foundation for a career in academia.

The hinterland of important centres like Petra (Southern Jordan) can provide essential information that contribute to the understanding of their rise, expansion and decline.

The Faculty of Archaeology offers a dynamic research environment for PhD candidates. Their projects at the Faculty span all fields in archaeological research, from fieldwork to lab work and heritage issues, from prehistoric to modern times, worldwide.

Tuna Kalaycı, ed. Archaeologies of Roads. 2023.

North, Middle and South America together constitute the single largest area in World Archaeology that is taught as a single focus. It is also the only major world area that saw societies develop from hunter-gatherers to early empires entirely independent from developments in Eurasia & Africa. It is,…

The project aims at contributing to the safeguarding of Palestinian cultural heritage and the enhancement of economic situation through tourism development, by presenting and managing one of the most important archaeological resources, the archaeological site of Tell Balata.

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.

New insights into the Fayum Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic.

ASLU (Archaeological Studies Leiden University) is a peer-reviewed book series produced by the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University.

The archaeology domain produces large amounts of texts, too much to effectively read or manually search through for research. To alleviate this problem, we created a search system (called AGNES), which combines full text search with entity and geographical search.

The ACE-network consists of heritage and research organizations from 10 countries which aim to promote contemporary archaeology at a European wide level, by emphasizing its cultural, scientific, and economic dimensions, including its manifold interest for the wider public.

This third issue of Ex Novo gathers multidisciplinary contributions addressing mobility to understand patterns of change and continuity in past worlds; reconsider the movement of people, objects, and ideas alongside mobile epistemologies, such as intellectual, scholarly or educative traditions, rituals,…

Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 51

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.

In the master’s programme in Archaeology, you can follow courses on the archaeology of the Near East, deepening your understanding of this region’s fascinating past.

The Death of Archaeological Theory, edited by John Bintliff and Mark Pearce, addresses the provocative subject of whether it is time to discount the burden of somewhat dogmatic theory and ideology that has built up over the last 25 years.

The Laboratory for Human Osteoarchaeology specialises in the macroscopic and microscopic analysis of human remains. We use cutting edge scientific approaches to address archaeological, historical, and anthropological research questions. In addition to paleopathological, histological, and 3D scanning…

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

The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology provides an overview of archaeological investigations in the insular Caribbean, understood here as the islands whose shores surround the Caribbean Sea.

This project investigates ancient water management of streams, springs and runoffs on the archaeological site of Monte Albán, Mexico, as a means to contribute with different stakeholders in the development of sustainable solutions to water problems today such as floods and scarcity.

The Mexican embassy, represented by the cultural attaché, Mr. José Manuel Springer, donated to the Faculty of Archaeology a voluminous publication of detailed maps of the historical and contemporary distribution of the indigenous languages of Mexico: “Catálogo de Lenguas Indígenas Mexicanas, Cartografía…

Proceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September, Burgos, Spain). Volume 7/Sessions A4b and A12

ASLU 27 Sjoerd van der Linde (2012)

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.

This book covers the story of Greece and its central role in our understanding of European civilization, from the Palaeolithic era (400,000 BP) to the early modern period (1950 AD).

The sixth issue of Ex Novo explores how ‘peripheral’ regions currently approach both the practice and theory of public archaeology placing particular emphasis on usually underrepresented regions of Eastern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean and beyond.

In this project we develop algorithms to automatically detect a particular type of archaeological sites in satellite images of the Alps.

The Tappino Area Archaeological Project aims to map and analyze ancient settlement patterns and dynamics in a small valley in Central-Southern Italy, in modern Molise (province of Campobasso). The first sites in the area date to the Bronze Age. In the Iron Age to Classical period, it was reportedly…

Metalworking Skill and Material Specialization in Early Bronze Age Central Europe

With the resumption of archaeological investigations at Satricum (Borgo LeFerriere, Latium), in 1977, a broad array of themes, methodologies and analytical approaches have been pursued. A common thread is technology, which encompasses all social, economic and cultural aspects of human agency.

The application of compliance archaeology techniques such as mechanical large scale excavations where large quantities of data are gathered in relatively little time (and relatively inexpensively) and a firm post-excavation research phase yielded a whole new body of archaeological evidence.

A research agenda

This unique collection applies globalization concepts to the discipline of archaeology, using a wide range of global case studies from a group of international specialists.

The manual analysis of remotely-sensed data is a widespread practice in local and regional scale archaeological research, as well as heritage management.

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…

Practical applications for the reconstruction of the past

The Darién region of Panama is the only land bridge connecting North, Central and South America. Nowadays home to descendants of African enslaved peoples, Indigenous peoples (Emberá, Wounaan, and Guna), and mestizos, Darién has been and still is fundamental to connectivity, cultural interchange, and…

Százhalombatta-Földvar is a Bronze Age fortified tell settlement on the right bank of the river Danube, 30 km south of Budapest in Hungary. It is one of the best preserved temperate climate tells in Europe and well-known for the extraordinarily rich data it produces. Since 2014 Leiden students are welcomed…

Inaugural lecture

Study Archaeology at Leiden University. Learn about a full range of theoretical, analytical and field methods from some of the world's leading archaeological researchers.

Native women are invisible in Mexican society. This is the conclusion Barbara Ortiz draws in her dissertation. PhD defence on 23 February.

This dissertation is concerned with the study of the less than twenty remaining precolonial Mesoamerican codices. By considering these rare and fragile pictographic and hieroglyphic books from the cultural biography perspective, many different aspects of these books can be studied.

A cultural sequence of western coastal French Guiana from 5000 BP to present

Archaeologist Tuna Kalayci investigates roads in a recent edited book. What happens if we think of roads not only as containers of action but also as dynamic and complex phenomena, as the action itself? This question inspired Dr Tuna Kalayci to bring together various studies across a wide range of epochs…