The Great Rift Valley in Africa is a real treasure trove for discovering early human fossils. The fossils found in this part of Africa have determined our view of human evolution. But was the Great Rift Valley really the place where evolution took place or just a place where fossils are well preserved…

Towards a Biological Understanding of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition

HomininSpace is an agent based modelling and simulation system in which fluctuating carrying capacity is the key attractor for hominin dispersal. A parameterized and spatially explicit reconstructed palaeo-environment models available energy in the form of secondary biomass using reconstructed climate…

Current status and future prospects

The Palaeolithic period extends from the earliest stone tools (and in Europe, earliest occupation) to the beginning of the current warm period.

The Leiden archaeologist Wil Roebroeks has been awarded the Spinoza prize for his original observations about early hominins and the development of human society, NWO (Netherlands organisation for Scientific Research) announced on Monday 4 June.

The use of fire can tell us a lot about human evolution. Archaeologist Femke Reidsma has developed a more accurate technique to identify how our ancestors used fire. Existing archaeological studies will need to be revised. Reidsma’s study was published in Nature Scientific Reports on 2 November.

Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production

Exploitation of smaller game is rarely documented before the latest phases of the Pleistocene, which is often taken to imply narrow diets for earlier hominins. In a study now published in Scientific Reports, a team of German and Dutch archaeologists present new data that contradict this view of Lower…

An Integrative Approach to the Hominin Record

In Europe, archaeological traces of fire become more frequent between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago; but could the earliest occupants have survived without fire for at least half a million years before this? How could the early occupants of Europe have kept warm and processed meat without fire?

This series of publications brings together new material on wellconsidered themes within the wide area of Early Modern Studies.

For early modern Europeans, the past was a measure of most things, good and bad. For that reason it was also hotly contested, manipulated, and far too important to be left to historians alone.

Promotor: A. Achúcarro, Co-promotor: A. Boyarsky

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How did Anglo-Saxons reflect on the experience of growing old? Was it really a golden age for the elderly, as has been suggested?

This thesis explores several aspects of these Early Old Babylonian Amorites.

This research network aims to promote cross-regional collaboration in the field of cultural history in early modern Asia at the intersections of visual, material, textual and aural culture.

The ‘Locke drawings’ collection and the representation of Brazilian native peoples in global perspective

Interpretation and Composition Outside the Work Concept

A Study of Middle Palaeolithic Riverside Settlements at Maastricht-Belvédère (The Netherlands).

Different groups of hominins probably learned from one another much earlier than was previously thought, and that knowledge was also distributed much further. A study by archaeologists at Leiden University on the use of fire shows that 400,000 years ago knowledge and skills must already have been exchanged…

This volume, edited by Erika Kuijpers, Judith Pollmann, Johannes Müller and Jasper van der Steen, discusses practices of memory in early modern Europe.

In the early universe, the dynamics of the Higgs field can give rise to many interesting phenomena.

On 13 September 2023 Eline Scheerlinck successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

The aim of the research project is to get insight in the biostratigraphical age and the palaeoecological setting of the Schöningen sites and hominin behavior and subsistence during the late Lower Palaeolithic.

Franx

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Microwear and starch grain analysis on experimental and archaeological grinding tools from Central

Non-urban settlement organization and Roman expansion in the Roman Republic (4th-1st centuries BC)

The Human Origins group at Leiden University studies the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, from the earliest stone tools in East Africa, more than three million years old, to the origin of sedentary societies towards the end of the last ice age.

Despite recent advances in medicine, many devastating disorders like cancer and cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases still lack effective treatments. In order to address this challenge, we, as scientists from Leiden University, joined hands in the LED3 network. LED3, for Leiden…

On 30 September 2021 Babette van Hazebroek defended her thesis 'Understanding delinquent development from childhood into early adulthood in early onset offenders'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.W. de Keijser and Prof. A. Popma (VUMC).

How do early modern states organize effective rule in difficult conditions? EMStaD YEMEN focuses on a country that due to its geographical, religious and social complexities is now considered a failed state – Yemen.

The Register of Early Modernists aims to facilitate collaboration between early modern researchers at Leiden University.

How can we facilitate the early recognition of stress and anxiety in the classroom and collaborate with schools in providing low-threshold interventions?

Early Christian Encounters with Town and Countryside - Essays on the Urban and Rural Worlds of Early Christianity.

Check our varied programme starting in May!

An early farming community in Thessaly, Greece.

Crime is men’s business, isn’t it? Women are responsible for 10 percent of crime in Europe. Yet, if we look at the Dutch Republic in the early modern period, we find that in the towns of Holland women played a much larger role in crime.

Promotores: F.H. van Lunteren, F.P. Israel

This NWO project, which is being be carried out in close cooperation with the universities of Oxford (contact: Prof. Robert Hoyland) and Princeton (contact: Prof. John F. Haldon) and the UMR 8167 (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, University Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV, University Panthéon-Sorbonne,…

The central aim is to systematically study differences in crime patterns and social control between migrants and non-migrants in early modern Frankfurt am Main.

We explore the particle physics and quantum world at the time of the big bang.

Can epigenetic changes explain associations between early life stress and health outcomes?

Tracing the residues of Neolithic activities through the study of stone artefacts

Dr. Rafal Matuszewski, assistant professor at the ancient history department of the Institute for History, has been awarded an Early Career Partnership by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

This research cluster explores processes of cultural creation, reception and transformation within a wide range of societal contexts from the early Middle Ages until c. 1800.