Are traces of fire use detectable in ancient hominin genomes?

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

This study links up the concept of place with memory, with the idea of transience and the transition from life to death.

Our recent excavations have focused on the more recent New Kingdom/Late Period (ca. 1500-332 BCE) material.

The material and intellectual presence of Egypt is at the heart of Western culture, religion and art from Antiquity to the present. This volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on Egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of…

In several Mediterranean regions archaeological sites have been mapped by fieldwalking surveys, producing large amounts of data. These legacy site-based survey data represent an important resource to study ancient settlement organization. Methodological procedures are necessary to cope with the limits…

Dynamics of material, social and ideological relationships in the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean

The Leiden Greek and Roman History Team concentrates on the study of the economies, societies and cultures of the large empires of the Graeco-Roman world, starting with the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors.

Surveying Indigenous Peoples’ culinary practices prior to the advent of European invasions in the Greater Caribbean

Scientists, including our faculty colleague Dr. Mike Field, studying an exceptionally well-preserved woolly rhinoceros have revealed details of what Britain's environment was like 42,000 years ago. The beast's remains were discovered in Staffordshire in 2002, buried alongside other preserved organisms…

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

On the 23rd of June Arianna Sacco successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

In the History of the Roman Emperors, what does Herodian’s method of composition consist of and how does it relate to his writing intention, particularly in terms of political and moral idea(l)s?

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.

Otrar as a Case Study for a 6-10th century Transition Zone

Recently, Prof. Stephen Russell (John Jay College, City College New York), a historian of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East gave a special seminar to the CareCentury Team.

The Impact of Mobility and Migration in the Roman Empire assembles a series of papers on key themes in the study of Roman mobility and migration.

This subproject of 'From Homo Economicus to Political Animal' analyzes Greek economic thinking of the Hellenistic period.

The central aims of this project are to establish the shapes of the various urban hierarchies existing in the provinces of the Roman Empire and (especially) to use the quantitative properties of these hierarchies to shed new light on levels of economic integration.

To what extent was labour-induced migration important to the functioning of the towns and cities of Roman Italy?

Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe

This subproject of 'From Homo Economicus to Political Animal' analyzes Greek economic thinking in late 5th- and 4th-century philosophical circles.

War and terrorism overshadow interest in the pre-Islamic heritage of the Arabic peninsula. The new Leiden Centre for the Study of Ancient Arabia aims to make the general public more aware of the ancient history of this region.

The Laboratory for Material Science, Technology and Culture (MATEC Laboratory) is a research and teaching facility dedicated to the scientific and cultural study of archaeological materials. We bring together a multidisciplinary team working at the intersection of materials science, archaeology, and…

This volume, featuring sixteen contributions from leading Roman historians and archaeologists, sheds new light on approaches to the economic history of urban craftsmen and traders in the Roman world, with a particular emphasis on the imperial period.

Hekmat Dirbas defended his thesis on 14 February 2017

This project examines the intriguing relationship between Greek literary criticism and Latin literature in Rome (first centuries BC and AD).

‘The Survival of Pliny in Padua. The Botanical Renaissance and the Transformation of Classical Scholarship’ in: Transformations of the Classics via Early Modern Commentaries, ed. by K.A.E. Enenkel. Intersections 29 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, forthcoming autumn 2013), pp. 327-62.

Moving Romans offers an analysis of Roman migration by applying general insights, models and theories from the field of migration history.

A technique originally developed for satellite imaging can now be used to recover pictographic texts from underneath the surface of a five hundred year old Mexican manuscript.

The Leiden Center for the Study of Ancient Arabia (LeiCenSAA) announces a new open access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the epigraphy of Arabia and its cultural and linguistic context: Arabian Epigraphic Notes

This project aims to explore the environmental impact of early Roman expansion (4th/3rd century BC) through a program of dating and ecological sampling of traces of field systems (centuriations).

Two Decades of Research in Nicaragua and Costa Rica

The Classics and Ancient Civilizations programme in Egyptology offers many extracurricular opportunities to enrich your study experience.