Erasing the Past: Why Cutting Archaeology Funding Hurts Us All

Since April archaeologists across the U.S. learned that they might have to end work worth decades of research–not because of a dead end but because they can no longer afford to look at it. Rather than promote federal funding of archaeology and related fields, the U.S. government has instead recently decided to cut archaeology funds. Since April, at least 16 grants have been cancelled at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the primary funder of archaeology in the U.S., which amounts to nearly $2 million in unpaid funds for archaeology and palaeopathology research and training. Similar funding cuts for other agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services, are currently affecting countless researchers, museums and other institutions.

According to the article ‘Funding cuts to U.S. archaeology could imperil the field’s future’ in Science magazine (2025), Christina Warinner, an anthropologist at Harvard University and president of the International Society for Biomolecular Archaeology, those funding cuts mean that archaeology in the U.S. will lose its prominence among global leaders, as researchers now have to decide between terminating their work, turning to private investors, or moving to countries ready to fund their projects.°1

Private funding can only substitute a small portion of the federal funding shortages and often has different aims. A study on federal research funding cuts, patents and entrepreneurship using data from the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, the ITRIS UMETRICS program and the Federal Audit Clearinghouse shows that while federal funding aims at keeping researchers in academia, private funding is more often patented and appropriated by the private sector.°2 It can prove impossible to renew halted or terminated archaeology projects since sites cannot be maintained while half-excavated without succumbing to environmental wear. Ari Caramanica, an archaeologist at Vanderbilt University, claims in the article ‘Funding cuts to U.S. archaeology could imperil the field´s future,’ that her research into past human responses to flooding in northern Peru would have contributed to ‘innovative thinking’ to urgent climate issues had it not been prematurely halted.°3 Caramanica lost a $145,000 NEH grant to a project eventually inevitably helpful as climate change will continue to intensify flooding in the U.S.

Moreover, cutting funds affects the future of history. Apart from postgraduate students being unable to progress their careers, professionals too have to face shortages as already approved research funds get rescinded. An anonymous source mentions that “because the current administration overturned an existing loan to a client” which at the moment cannot be replaced with private funding they had to cut 60% of their field stuff on a few days notice. Though the affected field technicians, as part-timers, are not officially “fired”, they nonetheless lost guaranteed income meaning that they are “temporarily out of work directly because of a Trump Admin decision”.°4 Universities may as well soon decide to cut either unprofitable modules or degrees, or merge several degrees together. This is not just a problem in the U.S. For instance, while Leiden University is still debating those drastic measures, Utrecht University will have downsized 10% of its Humanities budget by 2027.°5 

Downsizing the budget of federal funding in archaeology and related fields risks the extinction of ancient studies. The Netherlands has already begun to cut unprofitable degrees and the halting of research impedes finding solutions to urgent crises, including climate change. Such crises affect us all. Although the destruction of knowledge rarely makes headlines, its impact lasts for centuries.

1 Taylor Mitchell Brown, `Funding cuts to U.S. archaeology could imperil field’s future´, in Science magazine (2025). AAAS Articles DO Group. [online] doi:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.zk4y23m [accessed August 15, 2025].

2  Linda Gorman, `Are Federal and Private Research Funding Substitutes?´, in NBER, The Digest (2021).  [online] Available at: https://www.nber.org/digest/202103/are-federal-and-private-research-funding-substitutes [accessed August 15, 2025].

3 Brown, `Funding cuts to U.S. archaeology could imperil field’s future´.

4  “I can say is that with the Project I'm working on literally Monday we found out we had to cut 60% of our field staff (~20ish people?) because the current administration overturned an existing loan to the client. We're gonna be fumbling along with a single crew until a possible full stand down in the autumn unless the client can find private funding. The field techs were mostly part timers, so they're not like "fired", they just dont have the guaranteed income from this job that some of them have had since like 2022 and will have to either wait for another project or jump elsewhere/with another office. Point is- People are now at least temporarily out of work DIRECTLY because of a Trump Admin decision."

5  Beatrice Scali, `These major Dutch universities are axing multiple humanities programs´, in Dutch Review (2024). [online] DutchReview. Available at: https://dutchreview.com/news/dutch-universities-to-cut-humanities-programs/ [Accessed August 15, 2025].