This book contains a selection of nineteen articles published by K.R. Veenhof, focusing on his main field of study: law and trade in the Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian society of the early second millennium B.C. They were originally published in journals, conference proceedings and collective volumes over the past fifty years. Their reissue here is motivated by their lasting value and their fundamental importance to the study of these subjects.

It includes both “broad” articles, which gi...

In 2006 Leiden University has initiated a series Leiden Dissertations at Leiden University Press. This series affords an opportunity to those who have recently obtained their doctorate to publish the results of their doctoral research so as to ensure a wide distribution among colleagues and the interested public. The dissertations will become available both in printed and in digital versions. Books from this LUP series can be ordered through www.lup.nl.

The large majority of Leiden dissertati...

Sinds de jaren '90 is er in Taiwan sprake van een groeiend bewustzijn over het koloniale verleden. Dit uit zich in een flinke toename van het aantal musea en beschermd cultureel erfgoed. Samen met het oorspronkeljike Taiwanese erfgoed vormen ze een nieuwe politieke, culturele en economische richting. Met andere woorden, de voormalig koloniale locaties werden een bestanddeel van de nieuwe identiteit en cultuur van het postkoloniale Taiwan van de jaren 1990-2000.

Aan de hand van vijf locaties u...

This work analyzes ritual practices and knowledge related to the Mesoamerican calendar with the aim of contributing to the understanding of the use and conceptualization of this calendar system in the contemporary K'iche' community of Momostenango, in the Highlands of Guatemala. The research presented here discusses the indigenous calendar system, forms of synergy between the Christian and the Highland Guatemalan calendar, the indigenous perception of history and continuity in time-related sy...

The creation of new capital cities are watershed moments in the lives of ancient empires. Assyria, arguably the most successful imperial state of the ancient Near East, repeatedly engaged in capital creation. Capital creation denotes the development of a monumental capital, either in a new location or through the profound transformation of a pre-existing settlement. This volume focusses on the rationale, construction, and function of the imperial capitals of Assyria: Kār-Tukultī-Ninurta, Ka...

Dorestad was the largest town of the Low Countries in the Carolingian era. As a riverine emporium on the northern edge of the Frankish Empire, it functioned as a European junction, connecting the Viking world with the Continent. In 2019, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden hosted its quinquennial international congress based around Dorestad, located at present-day Wijk bij Duurstede. This third edition, ‘Dorestad and its Networks’, coincided with the fiftieth birthday of finding ...

Building on the experience of twenty-five years of fieldwork and archaeozoological analyses carried out during research projects in various regions of northern France, this book examines animal husbandry and hunting practices over the 5000 year period from the first sedentary groups to the more evolved societies, corresponding to the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age.

This approach is based on the processing of a very large amount of data, from sources as varied as settlements, assembly places, ...

Barrows at the Core of Bronze Age Communities argues exactly that. Round barrows do not just represent the death side of Early Bronze Age communities placed in set-a-side ritual landscapes, but were instead central to existence in many ways. This study of the Rother Region, where the Weald meets the Wessex massif, reports the results of the People of the Heath project, 2014–18. It integrates a wealth of data from comprehensive field study of all relevant sites in the region with that from e...

In 2015 at Dalfsen (the Netherlands) archaeologists made an amazing discovery. They found a burial ground dating from the TRB-period (3000-2750 BC) comprising 141 burial pits. The TRB is dated in the last phase of the Middle Neolithic period and is well known for its megalithic monuments which are widespread through large parts of northern Europe.

Until recently few non-megalithic burial grounds were known and the find of the Dalfsen burials created new opportunities to study the mortuary rit...

In the later Roman period the North Sea and Channel region was the scene of seaborne attacks, political crises, army reforms, Germanic invasions and changing imperial defence strategies. Literary evidence for this era is poor. On the other hand the Shore forts can yield highly significant information, but have been subject to little study in recent decades. At the Belgian coastal fort at Oudenburg large-scale excavations in the first decade of the 21st century revealed a strikingly well-prese...