The heritage of Indigenous Peoples has long been researched and commented upon from the outside. This book adopts an innovative approach by engaging with the heritage of Indigenous Peoples from the ‘inside’.

The research focuses on the understanding of symbolic stratigraphy of the land (through time) from the worldview of the People of the Rain (one of the Indigenous Peoples of southern Mexico), by studying contemporary cultural heritage in communities of the Mixtec Highlands.

The past, present, and future for local people and archaeologists in Sudanese Nubia

This dissertation approaches collections of Andean mummies in European national and university museums as the focus to understand the relationship between objects, documents, and the practice of collecting in the period from 1850 to 1930. Over 200 mummies, kept by 18 different museums in Western European…

Descolonización, continuidad cultural y re-apropiación de los códices mixtecos en el Pueblo de la Lluvia

This work focuses on the interpretation of the archaeological remains of the Mixtec culture in Southern Mexico on the basis of the knowledge, perceptions, economy and worldview of contemporary descendant communities.

EURAXESS asked Mariana de Campos Françozo about her current research conducted with an ERC Starting Grant.

A look into the political history of collecting and the collections of Andean mummies in Western European museums from 1830-1930 through archaeology and paleoimaging.

This study documents and translates the Saa (Zapotec) cultural heritage of the Bene’ Ya’a/En’ne I’ya peoples, the Zapotec inhabitants of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca.

Sharing Collections and Connecting Histories

That corn was highly important in the Maya culture is something that Genner Llanes Ortiz, himself a Maya from the Mexican province of Yucatan, has always known, right from his childhood. But just how important the role of corn is in the collective memory of his people, is one of the subjects of his…

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 knowledge held by indigenous people is essential if you want to study the history or the language of a particular region. Leiden archaeologists and linguists are now looking for ways of involving local people more systematically in their research.

Het zichtbaar maken van ongeschreven verhalen van inheemse culturen en volken van de Cariben. Dat doet de tentoonstelling ‘Caribbean Ties’ in de Oude UB.

Mariana de Campos Françoso and Amy Strecker published a new article in the International Journal of Cultural Property last week entitled 'Caribbean Collections in European Museums and the Question of Returns'.

As part of Mariana Françozo’s BRASILAE project, a group of representatives of the Ka’apor people was invited to visit Leiden. The Ka’apor, an indigenous people from Brazil, are some of the present-day relatives of the Tupi-speaking peoples who used to live in the northeastern region of Brazil, claimed…

Back in 2016, Genner Llanes-Ortiz joined the Faculty of Archaeology as an assistant professor in the Heritage of Indigenous Peoples research group. Genner works on the crossroads of anthropology, archaeology, heritage, and human rights. ‘I am investigating how contemporary indigenous peoples are re-connecting…

The question of land property titles is a common source of conflict between indigenous communities and federal authorities all over the Americas. A new Panamanian law have led indigenous communities to reach out to archaeologist Dr Natalia Donner. A grant from the Centre for Indigenous American Studies…

The European Research Council has awarded an Advanced Grant to Prof. dr. Maarten E.R.G.N. Jansen for the research project

On November 25, Dr Araceli Rojas presented her book El tiempo y la sabiduría: un calendario sagrado entre los ayöök de Oaxaca. The event took place in the Central Public Library of the State of Oaxaca, in the heart of Oaxaca City, at 7 pm.

In his new six-hour series, Africa's Great Civilizations, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. takes a new look at the history of Africa, from the birth of humankind to the dawn of the 20th century. One of the experts interviewed in the programme is our own dr. Sada Mire.

Film screening and Q&A