How did persistent social inequalities first emerge? What cultural trajectories and institutions made this key development possible? How can archaeological inform us about the formation of class societies?

This research project of the Catholic University of Leuven was created in 1976 by Professor Dr Pierre Vermeersch, who assumed its direction until 2003. The present director is Professor Dr Philip Van Peer.

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.

A linguistic test of hypotheses rooted in genetics and archaeology.

A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean

In this research I assess the impact of the recently discovered gas reserves south off Cyprus on the escalation of the Cyprus conflict.

On the 2nd of July, Axel Palmér successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Axel on this achievement!

Papers presented at a colloquium, held in honour of Professor Dr. P.J.R. Modderman, Leiden, 3-7 May 1982.

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

Reconstructing interactions between communities in and out of Cyprus in the early third millenium BC

Did early farmers deliberately use animal manure on their fields?

Balikh Valley Archaeological Project Monograph 1 - BAR International Series 468

Since the adoption of agriculture people have cultivated fields. The project concerns all kinds of aspects related to raising crops.

On the 7th of November, Rasmus Thorsø Nielsen successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Rasmus on this achievement!

Investigating the emergence of complex societies in Chalcolithic Cyprus.

Authors: Pierre-Bruno Ruffini and Olga Krasnyak

On October 7th the Department of Law at the University of Cyprus hosted a conference on company law titled: Cross-borders Mergers Directive: EU Perspectives and National Experiences. Professor Steef Bartman (Institute of Private Law, Department of Company Law) was invited to deliver the keynote address…

Dean prof. Willem Willems has visited Japan from 8-10 September, at the invitation of the Aomori District Council in northern Honshu. Purpose of the visit was to provide assistance in the nomination process for World Heritage Site of 15 prehistoric Jomon Culture sites in northern Honshu and Hokkaido…

For decades, scholars have wondered about the development and dissemination of languages around the world. What are the odds that peoples living thousands of miles apart speak varieties of Indo-European languages that are closely related? This riddle has now partly been solved thanks to an international…

Language can be a time machine: we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? PhD candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left…

From social inequalities in prehistory to placebo effects in medical treatments. Four researchers from Leiden University have been awarded a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant worth EUR 2.5 million to develop their research.

Close contact between women and dogs in prehistoric times Women and dogs were in close contact in the neolithic age of hunters-fishers-gatherers. This has been suggested by Leiden osteoarchaeologist Dr Andrea Waters-Rist and fellow researchers who have studied a tiny biological fossil. The fossil was…

If all goes according to plan, Vasileios Karakasis will successfully defend his dissertation on Thursday 15 October. This will not only be a milestone for Vasileios, but also for the Dual PhD Centre (DPC).

This dissertation explores how domestic political power struggles in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War engaged with the ongoing conflict in Cyprus and aims to demonstrate how socialist parties in Greece and Turkey struggled with the concept of the “nation” in battling for power and political positioning…

The project seeks to come to an understanding of the archaeology of the desert and the ways in which its inhabitants engaged with their constraint, marginal environments through time. It compares and interprets site distribution and community organisation over a long time scale and across several different…

Archaeological research of coastal farming communities on the southern North Sea coast, 2000-800 BC

Bronze Age settlement sites in the Dutch river area (c. 2000-800 BC)

The project Deconstructing Stability aims to improve reconstructions of late prehistoric landscapes and predictive models for the purpose of archaeological heritage management.

Nowadays, most Europeans speak a language belonging to the Indo-European language family. However, very different languages were spoken on our continent before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. The EUROLITHIC project tries to find answers to the question which languages these were and where they came…

Built Environment and Domestic Material Culture in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Cyclades, Greece (13th – 20th Centuries AD)

Case-studies on use-wear analysis of prehistoric flint tools

Cultural identity at the Late Prehistoric settlement of Aguas Buenas, Nicaragua, AD 500-1522

D. Fontijn, Quentin Bourgeois & Arjan Louwen (eds) (2012). This publication describes the history of “barrow landscape” near Echoput in Apeldoorn. Two burial mounds were examined and it became clear that our prehistoric predecessors carefully managed and maintained the open area for a long time, before…

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,…

The book explores how ceramic studies illuminate interactions among ancient Mediterranean communities. By integrating post-colonial perspectives and network analysis, the volume transcends traditional

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Serial learners: interactions between Funnel Beaker West and Corded Ware communities in the Netherlands during the third millennium BCE from the perspective of ceramic technology

The topic of Historical Linguistics and Philology at LUCL is language change in its broadest sense.

Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies 21, 2005

Our research deals with the deep history of Europe and Eurasia, from the inception of farming up until the beginning of the Roman Period. This was a period in which key developments took place that had a profound impact on European landscapes and society until the present day. Our research and teaching…

The study of language in change.

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