Penn Pandemic Diary Penn Pandemic Diary, Entry #28: Research in Limbo

Katherine Burge is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in Near Eastern archaeology and cultural heritage policy.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many research projects have been cancelled or postponed indefinitely. In many cases, researchers hope to proceed with their work at a later date, but it is clear that results—and likely career progress—will be delayed. Moreover, hard-won grant money and organizational planning is lost. As the saying goes, it is important not to worry about sunk costs; but it’s hard not to look at what should have been.

If this year had gone according to plan, I would have just returned from a six-week field season in southern Iraq and preparing to embark on another project in the Kurdistan region. Working as an archaeologist in the Middle East has made me no stranger to unexpected disruptions. In 2014 my fieldwork was cut short when the Islamic State briefly advanced into Kurdish territory and my team needed to leave quickly via a Peshmerga convoy and then a plane running low on fuel. Last year, we cancelled our season the day before we planned to leave for Kurdistan because of escalating tensions between the US and Iran.

With each new challenge, field researchers must weigh the risk against benefits and then sometimes cut our losses. That’s certainly true of COVID-19. The project in southern Iraq that we had planned for March and April has now been postponed indefinitely. And as for the Kurdistan project, which had been scheduled for late May to early July, we decided in March to hold off on making a decision, hoping that the virus would abate in the warm weather. But this project has now also been suspended.

In weighing our decision to cancel the 2020 field season, we consulted a contact in Erbil to get a sense of what things are like on the ground where the current number confirmed COVID-19 cases is relatively low. She told us that everything is pretty much business as usual with shops operating normally and people out and about during the day, though still adhering to the nighttime curfew. Travel is still limited, however, and though the airport is officially set to reopen after Ramadan, many believe that it will not. Administrative offices also remain closed which makes it difficult to obtain information about visas, permits, and other authorizations.

From our end, university-sponsored travel has been prohibited for the summer, putting any uncertainties about cancelling the season to rest. We have therefore elected (once again) to cross our fingers and postpone our season until spring 2021. To move in that direction, we will need to negotiate with our granting institutions, and discuss with the Kurdish Antiquities Department the possibility of extending our research contract after already receiving a 2-year extension for 2018-2020 due to the disruption caused by the Islamic State.

While it is frustrating to put our archaeological project on hold indefinitely, I recognize that my research is glaringly non-essential relative to the preservation of human life. The uncertainty of if-and-when we can return to our work and what that means for academia has sparked a lot of anxiety for me and many others.

Still, the archaeological record bears witness to cataclysmic events that have radically altered the course of human history, and in doing so, it shows us how crises and our responses to them can shape our future in positive and negative ways. As universities, research institutions and grant organizations restructure and recalibrate, I worry archaeology and other fields will become casualties of the pandemic. I do hope (without irony) that archaeology does not become a thing of the past.

The views expressed in the Penn Pandemic Diary are solely the author’s and not those of Penn or Perry World House.