This collection of essays explores processes of innovation in Greco-Roman technology and science.

Professor Sjef Barbiers will be appointed Managing Director of the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) with effect from 1 September 2025. He will step down as scientific director of LUCL as of that date.

An environmental and palaeo-economic reconstruction.

This project aims to excavate and date the setting of the east gate of the Roman fortress of Udhruḥ. This will be compared with other Diocletianic military installations from the region. We also hope to retrieve another gate inscription which can shed light on the function and political embedding of…

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 2

Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 3

In this publication the results of the analyses of the Roman harbour of Voorburg-Arentsburg (NL) are presented. This fully inclusive and integrated study of more than 1000 pages is published in two volumes. The publication is written in Dutch, but has got an extensive synthesis/summary in English.

This lecture will be hosted on Thursday, 12 February 2026 at 6:00 pm.

ASLU 28 Michalis Karambinis (2015)

This research project analyses the use of different, often competing, stereotypical images of Rome in Humanist Latin Poetry, by considering it as strategic appropriation of the classical heritage.

Today’s socio-economic challenges aren’t new. In the centuries after the retreat of the Roman state people with different backgrounds and with different ways of life somehow managed to build and maintain a complex economic system in northern Gaul that would produce the ruling dynasties of Europe. By…

Ineke Smit defended her thesis on 17 September 2019

Modern receptions of Graeco-Roman Antiquity are important ideological markers of the ways we envisage our own twenty-first-century societies. An urgent topic of study is: what kinds of narratives – sometimes controversial – about Antiquity do people create for themselves at this moment in time, and…

This book presents an archaeological overview of the presence and development of Egyptian material culture in the context of Augustan Rome.

Aetiologies seem to gratify the human desire to understand the origin of a phenomenon. However, as this book demonstrates, aetiologies do not exclusively explore origins.

PhD defence

To what end and how does Plautus constantly underline the Helleni(sti)c provenance of his art? How does this aspect relate the author’s originality?

Professor Sjef Barbiers is leaving his job as scientific director of LUCL for the position of scientific director of the Institute for the Dutch Language (INT) from 1 September.

In some parts of the Roman Empire public meals were the norm: the wealthy treated the whole city to a meal. This phenomenon that suddenly arose and disappeared just as quickly had to do with political and social developments, according to historian Shanshan Wen. PhD defence 6 September.

'Communal Dining in in the Roman West' explores why the practice of privately sponsored communal dining gained popularity in certain parts of the Western Roman Empire for almost 300 years.

The LUCL has a new Scientific Director. Professor Sjef Barbiers took over the reins from Lisa Cheng with effect from 1 January. 'This is a great opportunity to contribute to a wonderful institution.'

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

Banquets for the rich, porridge for the poor and a standard diet of bread, olive oil and wine. Just a few assumptions about the Roman diet.

Publication on the excavations at Roman fort Matilo in Leiden

This PhD-research is conducted to test the hypothesis that Gutenberg and consorts developed a standardised and even unitised system for the production of textura type, and that this system was extrapolated for the production of roman type in Renaissance Italy.

As Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS-KNAW) fellow, Tesse Stek will explore the intricate relationship between the history of ideas about Roman imperialism and contemporary archaeological interpretation.

How many cities were there actually in the Roman Empire? And why did some regions only have a few cities, while others consisted of a tight urban network? Luuk de Ligt, Professor of Ancient History, wants to know the answer to all these questions. With the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million awarded to…

The ancient Roman province of Lusitania, more or less contemporary Portugal, has been the focus of a joint research project by Leiden University, Évora University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. The research project has now been provided with a new boost by a large Regato grant managed…

This volume offers an innovative analysis of Roman political culture in Italy from the first to the sixth century AD on the basis of seven case studies.

This volume presents fourteen papers by Roman archaeologists and historians discussing approaches to the economic history of Pompeii, and the role of the Pompeian evidence in debates about the Roman economy.

Several years ago, two amateur archaeologists from Brabant discovered over a hundred Roman coins near to Berlicum in the north of the province. After years of research, it now appears that the location, close to a ford in the river, was a site for offerings. Another interesting fact is that the coins…

What is the relation between the experience and the act of exclusion?

For the past 2 years, Dr Letty ten Harkel has been jointly running an excavation project of a suspected Roman villa site on the Balearic island of Mallorca with colleagues Dr Antoni Puig Palerm and Ritchie Kolvers, MA. The project was recently awarded a LUF Chastelain-Nobach fund to explore the extend…

Through the Chastelain-Nobach LUF fund, Classical and Mediterranean archaeologist Tymon de Haas has received a grant for his research on the ecological impact of Roman expansion. He will use this grant to further expand on the case-study that was made possible by the Byvanck LUF fund earlier this ye…

Also including: Wateringen 4 & Acquiring a taste.

The present study explores the role of water in the ancient Roman city of Ostia.In antiquity, Ostia was situated at the intersection of the Tiber River and the Mediterranean Sea, and acted as one of the harbour cities of Rome for several centuries.This study investigates how water was acquired, used,…

Lecture, Ancient History Research Seminar

This project focuses on urban commercial space in Roman Italy and deals with the impact of economic growth on urban communities in the late Republic and the Imperial period (200 BCE – 300 CE).

How does the evolution of the archaeological landscape at Son Sard reveal rural settlement patterns on Mallorca, serving as a pars pro toto for Balearic rural archaeology?

The Villa Son Sard archaeological project aims to determine the boundaries of the Roman and post-Roman villa at Son Sard on Mallorca. While the team was excavating in the summer of 2023, several news outlets covered the findings.

Staff and students from the Faculty of Archaeology are just back from a newly started Field School in the inland of Portugal.

Eine Analyse materieller Kultur römischer Kolonien in der Mikroregion von Suessa Aurunca, Minturnae und Sinuessa

Subproject of

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…