Rate My Professor Daniel Osland

Associate Professor Daniel Osland serves as Head of the Classics Programme in the Department of Classics at the University of Otago. A Roman archaeologist, he earned his BA from Wheaton College (Illinois) in 2000, MA from the University of Cincinnati in 2005, and PhD from the University of Cincinnati in 2011. His research centres on the intersection between material remains and written sources, with a particular emphasis on questions of identity—how individuals and groups define themselves and assign identity to others, as illustrated by written and visual media. Ongoing projects explore economic trends in Late Antiquity, the Roman presence in the Iberian Peninsula, the end of the western Roman Empire, the evolution and reuse of Roman religious and public spaces, and transformations in dining and food preparation habits in late Roman and post-Roman Hispania. Osland supervises postgraduate research in Greek and Roman archaeology, Roman provinces, Late Antiquity, and Roman and Visigothic Spain/Hispania.

Osland has published extensively on Roman archaeology, including the authored books The Early Roman Cities of Lusitania (Archaeopress, 2006) and Evidence for Roman and Medieval Occupation inside the Alcazaba de Mérida: University of Otago Excavations in Mérida, Spain, 2016 (University of Otago Studies in Archaeology No. 28, 2017). Recent contributions include the chapter 'Lusitania' in A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman Empire (John Wiley & Sons, 2024), 'Numismatics and the Currency of Online Access' in Mediterranean Collections in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (Routledge, 2025), and the journal article 'The Role of Cities in the Early Medieval Economy' in Al-Masāq (2023). Other notable works encompass 'Abuse or Reuse? Public Space in Late Antique Emerita' (American Journal of Archaeology, 2016), 'Urban Change in Late Antique Hispania: The Case of Augusta Emerita' (University of Cincinnati, 2011), and 'Text and Context: Patronage in Late Antique Mérida' (Studies in Late Antiquity, 2019). He directed University of Otago excavations at the Alcazaba de Mérida in 2016 and collaborates on initiatives such as digitizing Roman coin collections for public access. In teaching, he offers courses on classical art and archaeology, Latin from introductory to advanced levels, and specialized topics including the archaeology of the fall of the Roman Empire.