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David Hernandez

Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Associate Professor

D.Hernandez Headshot
Office
245 O'Shaughnessy Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Phone
+1 574-631-1382
Email
dhernan2@nd.edu

Website

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Biography

David R. Hernandez, Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Associate Professor of Classics, is an archaeologist who specializes in the material culture of the ancient Mediterranean.
 
With the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Hernandez conducts archaeological fieldwork at Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, and, in collaboration with architect Paolo Vitti, is writing the two-volume book, "The Mausoleum of Hadrian and Castel Sant'Angelo: The Tomb and its Afterlife."
 
For more than twenty years, Hernandez has served as Principal Investigator of the Roman Forum Excavations (RFE) Project at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Butrint in southern Albania. Together with his team of archaeologists, Hernandez is studying the material and publishing the results of the excavation.
 
Hernandez serves on the editorial board of the American Journal of Archaeology. He has published a number of academic articles on the topic of ancient urbanism in Albania, Greece, and Italy, particularly in respect to the cities of Rome and Butrint. His work explores Greek and Roman colonization and topography, Roman imperialism, the imperial cult, Greek and Latin epigraphy, excavation methods and stratigraphy, and the historical archaeology of the Late Mediaeval and Early Modern periods.
 
Hernandez has also directed archaeological field projects at Rocca Bruna at Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, at the Late Bronze Age site at Mursi, at the Hellenistic city of Amantia, and at Butrint's ancient necropolis. He has received external fellowships and grants from Harvard's Loeb Classical Library Foundation, Princeton's Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, the Packard Humanities Institute, Butrint Foundation, American Philosophical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
 
Hernandez received his PhD and MA in Classical Archaeology from the University of Cincinnati and BA in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley. He began his career as an archaeologist working at the ancient city of Troy in Turkey.

 

Frequently Teaches: 

Greek Archaeology, Roman Archaeology, Roman History, Eternal Rome, Butrint's Buried History

Research Interests

Ancient Greek and Roman archaeology, imperialism, urbanism, topography, excavation methods, Epirus and the city of Rome

Representative Publications: 

Hernandez, D. R. 2025. 'Aphrodite Anadyomene: A Roman hairpin (acus crinalis) finial from the Roman Forum at Butrint.' In "A Cornucopia for a Polymath: Studies in Archaeology, Architecture and Art History for John Burnett Mitchell," edited by J. Chick, R. Hodges and I. Riddler, pp. 255-262. Archaeopress, Oxford.

Hernandez, D. R., 2024. 'Epirus.' In "A Companion to the Archaeology of the Roman Empire," Volume 1, edited by B. Burrell, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 346-372.

Hernandez, D. R. 2022. “Buthrotum.” In Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by T. Whitmarsh et al. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Hernandez, D. and R. Hodges (eds.) 2020. "Butrint 7: Beyond Butrint. Kalivo, Mursi, Çuka e Aitoit, Diaporit and the Vrina Plain. Surveys and Excavations in the Pavllas River Valley, Albania, 1928-2015." Oxford: Oxbow.

Hernandez, D. R. 2019. 'The Abandonment of Butrint: From Venetian Enclave to Ottoman Backwater.' Hesperia 88.2, pp. 365-419.

Hernandez, D. R. 2017. 'Buthrotum's Sacred Topography and the Imperial Cult: The West Courtyard and Pavement Inscription.' Journal of Roman Archaeology 30, pp. 38-63.

Hernandez, D. R. 2017. 'Bouthrotos (Butrint) in the Archaic and Classical Periods: The Acropolis and Temple of Athena Polias.' Hesperia 86.2, pp. 205-271.

Education

Ph.D., University of Cincinnati
M.A., University of Cincinnati
B.A., University of California at Berkeley 

Publications