The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) is devoted to the study of places in the human world from antiquity to the present time in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.

Seven years ago, Aris Politopoulos left Athens for a master’s programme at the Leiden Faculty of Archaeology. Now he has nearly finished his PhD dissertation. Furthermore, he has become a lecturer at the research group for the Archaeology of the Near East, and co-founded a foundation that deals with…

With the emergence of new methods and technologies such as improved DNA analysis and big data, archaeological research has changed radically in recent decades. The researchers from the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the Faculty of Archaeology use new scientific knowledge to answer fundamental…

Archaeology in Leiden encompasses the study of societies, cultures, and human behaviour from the past, aiming to reconstruct and revive them. With our mix of education and research you lay a strong foundation for an international career in archaeology or heritage management.

East European Politics is a refereed journal which publishes articles on the government, politics and international relations of the post-communist world.

DANS (Digital Archiving and Networked Services - an institute of the KNAW) has granted an application for a Small Data Project for the digitizing and disclosure of the Tell Sabi Abyad archive.

Archaeological expeditions from the Netherlands and Flanders for which the NVIC acts as the primary facilitating institution in Egypt.

The Department of Archaeological Sciences seeks to achieve the highest standards of excellence in science-driven education and archaeological research across the globe and across all periods.

Joanita Vroom, Associate Professor Archaeology, regularly tries out old recipes, together with a group of Archaeology students. 'You really need to love garlic.'

The master’s in East Asian Studies, a specialisation within the master's of Asian Studies, combines an exceptional range of courses with advanced language training and outstanding resources and expertise.

Current status and future prospects

Athens is universally known as a symbol of democracy, philosophy, and ancient Greek aesthetics. Some of the most famous classical monuments, including the Parthenon and the temple of Hephaestus, can be found here.

The ties between Leiden University and South East Asia, especially Indonesia, have been strong for centuries.

In this thesis, we develop a novel technique called Optical Near-field Electron Microscopy (ONEM), which aims to combine the advantages of both optical and electron microscopy: the high resolution of electron microscopy and the low sample damage of optical microscopy.

On Thursday 7 November 2024 Vaudine England successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute organizes every year its unique "Egyptology in the Field " study programme for MA students of Egyptology and Archaeology at Leiden University and KU Leuven. This two month programme takes place in January and February and aims to broaden the study of Egyptology with…

What can we learn from the diverse institutional logics of smart government in East Asia to inform cross-institutional AI governance?

Researchers using remote sensing technologies have characterized pre-Columbian regularly-shaped earthworks in forests in Central America and the Amazon. In tropical forested mountains in South America, two challenges arise when identifying archaeological sites through remote sensing. Firstly, sites…

Leiden University and the Netherlands National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) are jointly involved in the intensive archaeological exploration of Northern Syria, by means of field surveys and large-scale excavations at a number of archaeological sites in the Balikh basin: the Tell…

In January 2014 the first season will take place of a new research project from the Faculty of Archaeology in Oman.

This abrupt climate change of 8200 years ago (the so-called 8.2k calBP climate event) has received wide attention among natural scientists, also because of today's rapid climate changes and their impact on our own society. The archaeological implications, however, have not been investigated so far.…

Estudio arqueológico de la primera ciudad española en la Tierra Firme de América: Santa María de la Antigua del Darién

In 2019, Federico Cappadona was one of the first students to enroll in the new master’s specialisation Applied Archaeology. He recently graduated and he is happy to share his experience.

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

Leiden University has a long tradition of Asian language education. Chinese, Japanese and Korean partners are essential in providing a practical side of learning education.

The project entails research by international comparison into the effects of commercialisation in heritage management on the academic relevance and quality of the results of work that is essentially applied research. The research is carried out by Prof. dr. W.J.H. Willems and dr. M.H. van den Dries…

The Tides of History is a history podcast that takes listeners into the past while trying to identify how it echoes today. The current season centers around the Iron Age and the new episode features an interview with our own Bleda Düring.

The Digital Archaeology research group manages two computer laboratories with different purposes: the teaching lab (F1.01) and the research lab (A1.13a).

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.

Recently, Valentina Azzarà joined the Faculty of Archaeology as a postdoc in the Archaeology of the Near East research group. She mostly focuses on the archaeology of Eastern Arabia, especially Oman. “I literally fell in love with the place.”

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.

Long-distance Trade in Early Medieval Landscapes (ca. 6th-12th centuries)

Tuna Kalaycı, ed. Archaeologies of Roads. 2023.

Archaeological heritage management is concerned with the identification, protection, management and preservation of the material remains of human activity in the past (of whatever period and in whichever region of the world) and with the interaction that this involves with all kinds of stakeholders.

The goal of the ANASTASIS project is the analysis and publication of early medieval (Merovingian) cemeteries in the Netherlands (c. 500 – 750 AD).

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.

The researchers and students at the Department of Archaeological Heritage and Society at the Faculty of Archaeology study the role of the past in modern societies. They want to find out more about the relationships between the past and the present, and the role that heritage plays.

An Ancient Egyptian System of Workmen’s Identity Marks

Published by Brill Nijhoff and written by leading experts including national judges, academics and practitioners East African Community Law is the first comparative as well as open access textbook on EAC law. The book provides a key resource for the research, teaching, and practice of EAC law. It also…

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,…

This book is a celebration of the work of Professor Frans Theuws and was published in conjunction with the symposium held at the University of Leiden on June 29, 2018.

The archaeology of food is in all sorts of ways ‘hot’. To illustrate this, recently the book Medieval MasterChef was published, focusing on cuisine and foodways in the Mediterranean and north-western Europe during Medieval and Post-Medieval times.

The Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University is home to many experts on human evolution. The following staff members are part of the Leiden Human Evolution Collective.

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.

Study information

Study information

Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad and Prof.dr. Peter Akkermans have been awarded with the NWO Free Competition Grant for their research project 'Landscapes of Survival: Pastoralist Societies, Rock Art and Literacy in Jordan's Black Desert, c. 1000 BC to 500 AD'. Together, they study settlements, burials and inscr…

The faculty has been investigating hundreds of ancient stone tombs in Jordan’s Black Desert.