Starting on Thursday 16 May 2019, the Faculty of Archaeology features a new mini exhibition, ‘Archaeology&ME’. Ten showcases address the public’s connection with archaeology. They show how archaeology matters to them and how it constitutes a bridge between the past, present and future.

The Jordan Times has interviewed Peter Akkermans about the damage done to the Early Islamic archaeological site of Khirbet Al Umari, Jordan.

Maritime archaeologist Martijn Manders has been appointed professor of Underwater Archaeology and Maritime Cultural Heritage Management at Leiden University. He will combine his new appointment at the Faculty of Archaeology, which began on 15 July 2022, with his current position at the Cultural Heritage…

Dit rapport maakt deel uit van het project Receptenboek burgerparticipatie in opdracht van de Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) en met steun van het Fonds voor Cultuurparticipatie.

It is a common technique in global optimization with expensive black-box functions to learn a surrogate-model of the response function from past evaluations and use it to decide on the location of future evaluations.

A new NMR microscope gives researchers an improved instrument to study fundamental physical processes. It also offers new possibilities for medical science, for example to better study proteins in Alzheimer patients’ brains. Publication in Physical Review Applied.

Insights in diet, climate and ecology

Quantum hardware comes with a different computing paradigm and new ways to tackle applications. Much effort has to be put into understanding how to leverage this technology to give real-world advantages in areas of interest for industries such as combinatorial optimization or machine learning.

Much attention has been paid to the exchange of objects, ideas, and people in the Caribbean. Networks of interaction connected local communities across pan-regional scales, shaping indigenous socio-political integrations and their responses in colonial situations. This work examines the poorly understood…

What does the excavated material tell us about the continuation and/or change of urban life during the transitional phrases from Antiquity to the Middle Ages on Crete and in the eastern Mediterranean more generally?

Tell Balata Archaeological Park project On January 15th the cooperation project of the Faculty of Archaeology with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage) and the Ramallah office of UNESCO was officially closed. At the same time the Archaeological…

ASLU 28 Michalis Karambinis (2015)

The Heritage Quest project begins on Monday 6 April. Heritage Quest is the first large-scale citizen science archaeology project in the Netherlands: anyone can help find archaeological remains at Utrechtse Heuvelrug, a heavily forested region in the Netherlands. Citizens can thus get involved in scientific…

Imprint of Action is the first large-scale study focussing entirely on sociocultural impact in archaeology and, as such, is explorative in nature; it provides unique insights into the workings of interaction and participation in archaeological events, and openly shares qualitative and quantitative research…

ASLU 16

In the course of 2020 the Faculty of Archaeology was bolstered by some new staff members. Due to the coronavirus situation, sadly, this went for a large part unnoticed. In a series of interviews we are catching up, giving the floor to our new colleagues. We kick off with Dr Tuna Kalayci, who joined…

Wouter Verschoof-van der Vaart has developed a way to use Deep Learning and geography software to rapidly and systematically map prehistoric barrows, Celtic fields, and medieval charcoal kilns. This innovative method has been tested on high-resolution elevation maps from the Veluwe, the Netherlands.…

Simulation is a formal scientific method used to develop, compare and test hypotheses (models). In the last few decades the use of simulation has increased dramatically in virtually all scientific disciplines, but is still limited in archaeology due to the technological barrier – coding skills. Starting…

Olivier Nieuwenhuijse, project leader of the project Focus Raqqa, was hosted by the NOS Radio 1 news broadcast on February 16, 2017.

‘Qasr Bshir is magnificent even in decline. It sits majestically in the landscape, master of all it surveys. On approaching the site, however, it is clear that the structure is damaged’, states the latest issue of the journal Current World Archaeology.

Second year BA Archaeology student Jeroen Huizer decided to participate in an excavation this summer, and he is giving us a peek in doing fieldwork under corona restrictions.

In the student-made documentary, our Field School manager, Dr Arjan Louwen, gives a brief introduction on the importance of the excavation in Oss. Watch the documentary below.

Archaeology can help us reflect critically on our European identity. This is what David Fontijn will claim in his inaugural lecture on 18 March.

A comparative study of colonialism and rural settlement in first millennium BC west central Sardinia

The Archaeology of Consumption in the Eastern Mediterranean (ca. 500-1500)

Mining time series is a machine learning subfield that focuses on a particular data structure, where variables are measured over (short or long) periods of time.

In July 2023, Leiden University conducted another phase of its ongoing archaeological collaboration with the Kalinago Territory in the Caribbean island of Dominica. Activities focused on mapping and assessing coastal sites impacted by climate stressors, undertaking knowledge-exchange sessions, and co-creating…

Crossing borders and connecting people in archaeological heritage management. Essays in honour of prof. Willem J.H. Willems

Pioneering in the archaeology of Somaliland, hosting international TV and radio shows, and producing a very successful MOOC: Dr Sada Mire already has a formidable track record.

This thesis explores the value of cultural and archaeological heritage through a focus on multinational corporations (MNCs) across industries and their involvement with cultural heritage.

Many mosaic stones and potsherds have been excavated, and a Byzantine synagogue is revealing its history layer by layer. The excavations at Horvat Kur are a field school for a young generation of researchers.

Robert Ietswaart does research into gene regulation at the famous Harvard Medical School in Boston. He developed an algorithm to better predict whether a candidate medicine is going to produce side effects. He studied mathematics and physics in Leiden, and gained his PhD in computational biology in…

A Spatial Enquiry into the Urban Society of Rome’s Imperial Port-Town

Special achievements, grants and a top 10 ranking, a great calendar year for the Faculty of Archaeology! See the overview of 2023 in the hall of fame below.

The funerary textile tradition from the Osmore Valley, South Peru, and its social-political implications (2005)

Dr Bleda Düring deemed it was time for an archaeological approach on the imperialisation of Assyria. ‘While there are lot of archaeological studies of Assyrian sites, they are not really trying to address this broader picture of imperialism and how this imperialisation actually worked.’ These imperialisation…

Is the possibility of computers making decisions for us in the future realistic? Holger Hoos, professor of Machine Learning, gives his opinion about the future of artificial intelligence in the television show ‘The future is fantastic’ on NPO3.

NEARCH aims to explore the different dimensions of public participation in contemporary archaeology and uncover new ways to work and collaborate within this field of expertise.

In this work, we attempt to answer the question:

Radiography is an important technique to inspect objects, with applications in airports and hospitals. X-ray imaging is also essential in industry, for instance in food safety checks for the presence of foreign objects.

From once controversial scientific works and historical bibles, to personal shopping lists and clothing bills. The 17th-century Bibliotheca Thysiana and the archive of the collector Johannes Thysius exhibit both the intellectual and everyday life as it was three hundred years ago. Now a brand-new digital…

Leiden University and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management are involved in a collaboration in the form of a research project titled 'Data-Driven Risk Assessment in Infrastructure Networks'.

Source: J Cheminform, Volume 6, Issue 1 (2014)

In this thesis, we examine various systems through the lens of several numerical methods.

In Indigenous Ancestors and Healing Landscapes Jana Pešoutová presents new interpretations of current healing practices in Cuba and the Dominican Republic juxtaposed against the European colonization of the Caribbean after 1492.