Rate My Professor Philip Latham

As Laboratory Manager, Latham oversees an extensive array of archaeological facilities totaling 295 square meters on the ground and first floors of the Richardson Building. These include dedicated spaces for cleaning and sorting excavated materials, a controlled-temperature room for drying wet samples, laboratories for processing, identification, and analysis of assemblages, and secure storage for archaeological collections. The labs feature comprehensive reference collections of faunal remains, lithic materials, and artefacts. Specialized equipment supports advanced research through a spatial analysis laboratory with GIS capabilities, a microscopy lab, a petrology lab for thin-section preparation, and an ancient DNA laboratory. Latham acts as the primary point of contact for accessing these resources, enabling researchers, staff, and students to conduct high-quality analyses. He also fulfills the role of Departmental Health and Safety Officer, ensuring safe operations across the laboratories. His technical expertise and support have been acknowledged in numerous peer-reviewed publications spanning obsidian sourcing, phylogeographic studies, isotopic analyses of colonial remains, and more, underscoring his integral contributions to archaeological research at the University of Otago.