A team of three students affiliated with Leiden University is shedding new light on the lives, diets, health, and mobility of individuals buried at the historic church site in Koudekerke, Zeeland. The project, a collaboration with the Walcherse Archeologische Dienst and funded by the Municipality of…

The prestigious Praemium Erasmianum Dissertation Prize is annually awarded to the five best dissertations published in the year before in the fields of Humanities, Social sciences and Law. During a festive ceremony in Utrecht Lennart Kruijer received the award from the hands of professor Bas ter Haar…

The starting point of human-induced landscape changes has been under permanent debate. It is widely accepted that the emergence of agriculture strongly increased human impact on their environments. However, foragers can and do actively transform land cover and ecosystems. Ethnographic observations,…

This fall, LUCIS will have the pleasure of welcoming Professor Hugh Kennedy from SOAS University of London to Leiden. He is the fourth Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation Visiting Professor in Arabic Culture at Leiden University.

Arts and culture

The Hub for Impactful and Engaged Research is a new collaboration that brings together five leading educational institutions in the province of Zuid-Holland: Leiden University, the LUMC, Delft University of Technology, Erasmus Medical Center and Erasmus University Rotterdam.

How can we tell whether and how a prehistoric weapon was used? How can we better understand the dexterity and combat skills involved in Bronze Age spear fighting? A research team from Leiden and Göttingen University present a new approach to answering these questions: they simulated the actual fight…

From sponsored runs to festivals and from open days to concerts: Leiden University hosts lots of events each year. We are highlighting six of them for 2023.

Hunter-gatherers caused ecosystems to change 125,000 years ago. These are the findings of an interdisciplinary study by archaeologists from Leiden University in collaboration with other researchers. Neanderthals used fire to keep the landscape open and thus had a big impact on their local environment.…

Lecture, Research Seminar Medieval and Early Modern History

Bachelor, Master

For the following years, Dr Aitor Burguet-Coca will be a returning face at the Faculty of Archaeology. He will join Dr Amanda Henry’s team with his expertise on prehistoric fire use and the methodologies that studying ancient hearths requires.

What do you build with when trees are scarce and winters are brutal? For hunter-gatherers living in current-day Ukraine some 18,000 years ago, the answer was simple: mammoth bones.

Obsidian, a volcanic glass-like material, is often used for making tools by Mesoamerican societies. In Honduras, certain obsidian artefacts do not yet have a known provenance. PhD candidate Marie Kolbenstetter and Assistant Professor Dennis Braekmans were awarded a Corrie Bakels Grant to explore thus…

Over the past few years, citizen scientists from the Heritage Quest project have scoured the entire Veluwe and Utrechtse Heuvelrug areas for unknown archaeological heritage. One of the results of this research is that the number of known burial mounds in this area has doubled.

Course

If the University is involved in a crisis or calamity, a crisis management team will be formed. For small incidents, every building has its own Emergency Response Coordinator.

Dr Nathalie Brusgaard both studied and finished her PhD at the Faculty of Archaeology in Leiden. After a few years spreading her wings, she is now back. As the new Assistant Professor in the World Archaeology department, she will continue her research on the relationship between prehistoric humans and…

The first settlers of the Caribbean have long been regarded as bands of highly mobile groups who subsisted exclusively by hunting, gathering, and fishing. In recent years, however, there has been increasing evidence for the cultivation of domesticated plants by early groups and a lower degree of mobility…

Museum Jan Cunen in Oss presents the very first retrospective exhibition of the richest graves from the early Iron Age (800-500 BC), including the one of the iconic Lord of Oss. Leiden archaeologist Richard Jansen was guest curator and the exhibition tells the story of the funeral rituals of the local…

PhD

We do it every day but barely give it a thought: chewing our food. But the ‘simple’ process of masticating food may have played a crucial role in the evolution of our jaws, facial muscles and teeth.

For thousands of years, the prehistoric communities of the Low Countries followed their own path, compared with the rest of Europe. An international research team has now published these findings in Nature.

PhD defence

Security

Each month, we publish an article showcasing how social science research and education contribute to solving societal challenges. Researchers, lecturers, students, and societal partners work together to make knowledge accessible and to make a difference. Through open science and engaged education, we…