Climate change, depletion of natural resources, loss of natural and cultural landscapes, and many other (ecological) sustainability challenges urge us to (re)evaluate human interaction with the natural world. This renewed environmental consciousness has invigorated not only scientists working on effects…

Optimally solving real-world expensive Black-Box Optimization (BBO) problems w.r.t. real-world constraints, such as wall-clock time and computational costs, is extremely difficult and tedious.

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.

This project aims to integrate three of the largest survey databases in the Mediterranean to study the impact of the megalopolis Rome on its direct hinterland.

How did Angkor interact with regional urban centers? How did the settlement system impact the society's agricultural system and regional resilience?

What motivated past human societies to repeatedly invest labour, generation after generation, in constructing, maintaining, and enhancing monumental structures in an environment prone to frequent and unpredictable natural disasters? Moreover, how did societal resilience and periods of heightened or…

In the upcoming Dutch general elections, the focus of the party campaigns is on national issues. Luuk van Middelaar, Professor of Foundations and Practice of the European Union and its Institutions, argues in a column in Dutch newspaper NRC that foreign policy should also be on the agenda.

The emergence of metalwork deposition during the Bronze Age in Northwest Europe, c. 2300-1500 BC

How can archaeological datasets reveal the interplay between past indigenous understandings of the surrounding world and resilient and sustainable ways of life in the Isthmo-Colombian Area?

The glycosylation reaction is a pivotal reaction in creating new and complex oligosaccharides.

This five year research project aimed to investigate the role of minor central places in the economy of Roman Central Italy.

MINESCAPES invites PhD students from various disciplines to apply for participation in their 2024 summer school, taking place from May 31 to June 10, 2024. The Summer School will bring together students and scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to study mining landscapes…

How does the commodification and re-appreciation of the contiguous uplands of Northeast India, Bangladesh and Burma/Myanmar transform the relationship between these states and their upland citizens?

This project aims to contribute to the improvement of documentation and archiving standards (conform the FAIR principles) for systematic Mediterranean archaeological field survey.

Large-scale forest fires started by prehistoric hunter-gatherers are probably the reason why Europe is not more densely forested. This is the finding of an international team, including climate researcher Professor Jed Kaplan of the University of Lausanne and archaeologist Professor Jan Kolen of Leiden…

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

On 10 January 2013, Quentin Bourgeois (Cum Laude) graduated with his thesis on the origin of barrow landscapes. Side Stone Press published his dissertation

Landscape history, representation and identity in the Grenada islandscape

For a long time it has been thought that habitation and landscape organisation only changed significantly from the Roman Period onwards. However, many developments were already started long before Julius Caesar's Roman armies arrived in the southern Netherlands.

The Pontine Region Project (PRP) is an on-going archaeological project that aims to study the long-term history of settlement and landscape in the Pontine region

For optimization problems, it is often unclear how to choose the most appropriate optimization algorithm. As such, rigorous benchmarking practices are critical to ensure we can gain as much insight into the strengths and weaknesses of these types of algorithms.

Time, Religion and Sacred Discourses of the Ayuuk People

Leiden archaeologists investigate how people in the past impacted their environment. Together with scientists, environmental scientists, and humanities experts, they use this information to draw conclusions about the present – and show what we can learn from it for the future.

This study documents and translates the Saa (Zapotec) cultural heritage of the Bene’ Ya’a/En’ne I’ya peoples, the Zapotec inhabitants of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca.

The Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society focuses on the relationships between past and present, the role of heritage in society, and how heritage conceived broadly can contribute to improving quality of life.

Annually, the Dutch Palynologische Kring invites nominations for the Florschütz Award for best MSc thesis in Palynology and Palaeobotany. This year, the thesis of Archaeology alumna Oda Nuij was deemed to be the best one. Oda was surprised to hear she won, since she was not sure that the thesis would…

Rural cult places were of central importance in the non-urbanised areas of ancient Samnium, in central southern Italy. Their development, roles and functions in ancient society, however, remain important research questions. New excavations at one of these sanctuaries, the rural temple of S. Giovanni…

This 4-year research project focuses on vernacular and unacknowledged heritages of the highlands of Bhutan. It seeks to make a major contribution to the preservation of these heritages, to create a cultural resource for current and future generations.

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,…

A palaeogeographical reconstruction of Bronze Age West-Frisia (2000-800 BC)

The Guava Platform, which is at the centre of this PhD thesis, was initiated in 2014 as a conceptual framework of my art practice and research. The aim of the Guava Platform is to research and create possible techniques of art-actions that are part of my quest to continue to live in the conflicted landscape,…

Lecture

Large carnivores and humans, along with their livestock, have co-existed for thousands of years. However, human population growth and an increase in economic activities are modifying the landscape for large carnivores and their prey.

How does environmental heterogeneity shape biodiversity across spatial and temporal scales?

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…

Contemporary Maya Calendars

The research that is united in the Liveable Planet programme, touches upon a wide range of aspects of human life. The goal is to deepen and expand the scope and to connect more researchers. The following case studies are examples of current research projects.

Short introduction

The arrival of Columbus to the Caribbean in 1492 marked a milestone in world history. In both the European and the indigenous world, a set of economic, political and hierarchical networks and relations were defined, structured and changed. These changes affected the indigenous population at different…

Climate finance, especially for developing countries, is crucial for limiting global warming to 1.5C. However, the current level of North -South climate finance is chronically inadequate. As the climate crisis intensifies, more actors are entering the climate finance market, transforming the global…

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