The Future of Anthropological Research - Ethics, Questions, and Methods in The Age of COVID-19 - Part 2 - Wenner-Gren Foundation

21/10/23, 16:23 The Future of Anthropological Research: Ethics, Questions, and Methods in the Age of COVID-19: Part 2 | Wenner-Gren
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Anna Agbe Davies

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July 6, 2020
The Future of Anthropological Research: Ethics,

Questions, and Methods in the Age of COVID-19: Part 2
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21/10/23, 16:23 The Future of Anthropological Research: Ethics, Questions, and Methods in the Age of COVID-19: Part 2 | Wenner-Gren Foundation
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INTRODUCTION
Welcome back to our series on the future of anthropology. For the second session, we
spoke with biological anthropologists and archaeologists from different countries and
traditions. In the following posts, they reflect on the current moment and what it
means for the future of the field.
DISPATCHES ON “THE FIELD”
Image by Kjersti
Severinsen
Anna Agbe Davies

Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill
One of my first reactions, when asked about the nature of archaeological fieldwork
during the Covid-19 pandemic and looking over our prompts, was that “fieldwork”
means something quite different for archaeologists than for sociocultural
anthropologists. But does it, really?
I’m thinking about the ways that archaeologists have attempted (sometimes
successfully) to engage with living people, the descendants of the people who
occupied the sites we call our “field,” and the people who now live there. Many
archaeologists will now acknowledge that they strive for a practice that is critical,
meaningful, and engaged. This kind of scholarship is, as they say, “high touch.” One
must talk with people, form relationships, build trust, engage in back and forth
negotiations. Does a pandemic in which face-to-face conversation is complicated, if
not impossible, up the complexity of this process just enough to cause archaeologists
to throw up their hands and give up? Safety restrictions might give cover to those
who would rather retreat into a scholarly bubble, and not concern themselves with the
living.
Further considering Danilyn and Yael’s charge, I found myself wanting to trouble, or
confront, its terms. If we all want to know how to do fieldwork under radically new
conditions, it seems wise to spend some time thinking about what we mean by
“fieldwork.” Where is “the field?” What we as anthropologists and archaeologists
signify by “the field” tells us a lot about our norms and values, the techniques we
consider valid, the forms of knowledge that count for us.
“The field” matters so much to us in part because it is a site of enculturation. It may

be where stories of the ancestors get passed down. It may be where we form
communities in which people not only learn and pursue knowledge together (as we do
in a classroom), but in which people also may live side by side, perhaps at some
remove from the “real” world.
Some skills and modes of knowledge production that we consider essential are
thought to be best learned in “the field.” We share equipment. We pore over one
another’s notes. We pass artifacts back and forth, learning to identify and analyze
them literally looking over one another’s shoulders. This is not a 6-feet-apart
scenario.
What it comes down to, from where I stand, is that some of the aspects of being who
we as individual anthropologists, individual archaeologists, are (that is, our roles, our
identities, our personae) often emerge from key moments and experiences in the
field. The coronavirus pandemic is hindering our ability to inhabit those identities
and to teach and learn archaeology as an embodied practice, as a part of ourselves.
And yet, John Jackson has observed, and I concur, that “an anthropologist is always
on the clock.” A consequence of the above-mentioned embodiment of disciplinary
identity is that we can, potentially, find “the field” anywhere and everywhere that we
encounter humans and their material traces. Instead of assuming a fixed relationship
between “the field” and a certain kind of site, perhaps we can accept (either because
of “these times” or because ”these times” are the crisis that compels our acceptance
of) a relational rather than an essentialist definition of our sites, our data, and our
processes of data collection—our “fields.” Specifically, I claim that it is the presence
of an anthropologist, an archaeologist, that engenders “the field.”
Maybe current conditions mean people can’t study the thing (the location, the
collection) that they wanted to, but is it really the thing that we are curious about, or
is this thing simply an instantiation of an object that is more abstract? If we can
accept the latter orientation, then the inaccessibility of the thing becomes less
troubling.
My year of visiting English classrooms in Norway was cut short, but I learned a lot
about what English means to young Norwegians (and what it does for them) by
observing the use of English on placards at a Black Lives Matter protest in front of the
parliament building in Oslo (Figure 1). Eventually, I anticipate analyzing these
placards as material things and considering how they compare with the stickers that
are widely used to spread political and ideological messages in Norway (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Photo by Anna Agbe Davis
Figure 2. Photo by Anna Agbe-Davis
I realize that it’s easier said than done, but a great deal might be accomplished (from
reassuring our junior colleagues, to reinvigorating the discipline, to discovering new
“fields”) by shifting our thinking from “How can we identify new methods—
especially methods of data acquisition—to continue to do the same work under the
conditions of a pandemic?” to the question posed in the prompt: How will the
conditions of a pandemic shape the kinds of questions anthropologists can ask?
As I walked around Oslo during the shutdown, I found myself curious about the new
proxemics that was emerging. I started to observe people navigating shared spaces as
the fear of contagion or the wish to protect others has changed the rules of the game.
I found myself thinking about the material apparatus of social (some prefer the term
“physical”) distancing: the plexiglass shields at counters; the tape on the floor telling
you where to stand; and the extent to which people paid attention to these new cues
for behavior—when, why, who? Passing through the liminal spaces of four
international airports, I had an opportunity to reflect on the modes and materials of
protection taken up by different national and intra-national social groups. Now,
sitting at home in North Carolina under quarantine, I’m following with great interest
the endless discussion of what a mask means.
I still wonder, though, given the structures within which we operate, even if emergent
or precariously-employed scholars were willing and able to “pivot” their research, to
study stickers, protest placards, and inspirational chalk art instead of ancient
inscriptions, posthole patterns, and pots, would it be an act of solid mentorship to
encourage them do so, knowing all of the extra value that is attributed to a business-
as-usual field experience?
Because, of course, we are not perfectly autonomous actors. We are constrained by

the social structures within which we work and live. Consider those for whom the
sign-vehicle “the field” evokes meaning (Figure 3).[1] How is that entity (a funding
agency, a university promotion committee, a dissertation chair) situated within the
structure of anthropology, of the academy? How is that entity situated in relation to
the archaeologist attempting to assert that “the field” can, should, or does signify
something new?
Figure 3. Image by Harold Agbe-Davies
I don’t have a solution, or even answers to my many questions, but I do have a plan. It
involves using whatever leverage I have to challenge the structural forces that
reinforce essentialist and narrow ideas about our fields of inquiry. It involves humility
and open-mindedness in the face of an anthropology that doesn’t look like mine but,
because it was formed in the crucible of these troubling and troubled times, could take
us all somewhere completely new.
Footnotes
1. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1994. Division of Signs. In The Collected Papers of Charles
Sanders Peirce. Electronic edition.
References
Atkin, Albert. 2013. Peirce’s Theory of Signs In The Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/peirce-semiotics/>
FIELD WORK AND FUTURES DURING THE CORONAVIRUS

“ANTHROPAUSE” [1]
Anthony Di Fiore
Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin
The global coronavirus pandemic is forcing people around the world to rethink almost
every aspect of our daily lives, social interactions, and livelihoods. Unsurprisingly, for
many academic researchers – and maybe particularly for faculty and students in
Anthropology – this moment is prompting introspection about the “point” of our
projects. (Is research about anything other than the virus and how it intersects with
human biology and culture really that important or even relevant?) It is also
challenging us to confront certain ethical issues head on. (How might my presence
impact the health of people and wildlife in the regions where I am working?). On a
practical level, too, we are being forced to wrestle with how to continue to make
“progress” on our scholarship in the face of uncertainty about the future.
For primatologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and human biologists whose work

involves field work and field training, there is little doubt that the present crisis is
going to have an outsized impact on our research programs. With travel curtailed,
social distancing measures and quarantines in place around the globe, and
universities and funding agencies placing restrictions on how and when even already-
allocated funding can be used, many of us are now precluded from visiting research
stations and excavation sites, from running or attending field schools, and from
participating in any but virtual conferences. Additionally, access to many libraries
and museums, both in our home countries and abroad, is suspended as those
institutions grapple with their own challenges for weathering the pandemic and for
keeping staff and collections safe. Even more important than these tangible,
bureaucratic restrictions, though, is the fact that ethical concerns about the health
and safety of our interlocuters and collaborators and of local wildlife
populations demand that we pause and reevaluate any sort of field work – particularly
field work taking place in remote sites or in places where the public health
infrastructure is limited – as researchers are potential vectors, who could spread the
virus far beyond urban centers into vulnerable populations and ecosystems.
Some forms of research in biological anthropology and archaeology might be possible

to sustain, even if, as looks to be the case, much field work remains curtailed into the
foreseeable future. For many of us, our research involves analyzing physical materials
– bones, fossils, artifacts, biological samples, soils – that were collected in prior field
seasons. In some institutions, labs that were shut down at the start of the pandemic
are now beginning to “open up”, so it may be possible for work with these materials to
begin again. Still, restarting “bench” research is contingent upon the development of
adequate plans for safeguarding and monitoring the health of personnel (and on
approvals from institutional review boards) and also requires that PPE and other lab
safety supplies and consumables can be procured consistently and predictably, which
may pose logistical challenges. Other kinds of non-field-based research, such as
bioinformatics work or modeling studies or comparative analyses involving existing
datasets, may be easier to pivot to, but only if researchers can access relevant
datasets, training, and information infrastructures.
In considering how the coronavirus pandemic is likely to impact anthropological

research and the discipline itself over the coming months and year, we need to
acknowledge and conscientiously address two important issues. First, the ability to
“restart” a research project, or to pivot a research program towards addressing
questions and using methods that are viable even when we cannot travel
internationally, is a privilege that is likely to extend only to select members of our
community, e.g., to established researchers with existing labs and funding or to those
with access to robust university supply chains for procuring PPE, reagents, and
consumables. Thus, even where lab or remote research can proceed, we are likely to
see many international students, visiting scholars, and undergraduates being cut off
from research opportunities. Unless we find ways to push back, the situation is likely
to perpetuate and exaggerate structural inequalities associated with the colonial
history of academic research and narrow the diversity of experiences and scholarly
approaches represented in our institutions.
Second, it is clear that the costs imposed by the current pandemic are going to be
differentially experienced by folks at different stages of their careers. Unquestionably,
it will be more challenging and more professionally risky for graduate students, post-
docs, and junior faculty members to have their academic trajectories slowed or to have
to pivot their research to embrace new topics and new methods than it will be for
more senior researchers with existing labs and funding. Just as we saw with the shift
to virtual instruction and remote work spurred by the pandemic, students and faculty
with young children are likely to bear the brunt of disruptions to public school
schedules and shrinking childcare options that limit the time that can be devoted to
learning and deploying new research skills. It will be important for us to hold our
departments and institutions accountable for supporting our students and junior
colleagues and ensuring they are treated equitably in promotion and granting
decisions.
Finally, like many others, at the height of the lockdown I was struck by reports of how
much less impact humans, writ large, were having on the natural world in
conspicuous ways. We saw pictures from around the globe of clearer skies over urban
centers, heard about how much global CO2 admissions had fallen, and, here in the US,
read accounts of wildlife running around the streets of San Francisco, Seattle, and
Austin. As a wildlife biologist, it was incredibly uplifting to see these small examples
of resilience during the “anthropause” (Rutz et al. 2020), though it is sad that it took
humans sitting so thoroughly still and not touching the world around us to appreciate
the extent to which our just being impacts the rest of the planet. As we eventually
emerge from the coronavirus crisis, this effect, unfortunately, is going to fade. If there
is any new direction towards which we should be turning our ethnographic research
tools as a result of the pandemic, it is to the interconnectedness of humans with other
organisms and actors in our ecosystem.
Footnotes
1. I love this word… it just entered our vernacular on June 22nd in a commentary
published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
References
Rutz C, Loretto M-C, Bates AE, Davidson SC, Duarte CM, Jetz W, Johnson M, Kato A, Kays
R, Mueller T, Primack RB, Ropert-Coudert Y, Tucker MA, Wikelski M, & Cagnacci F (2020).
COVID-19 lockdown allows researchers to quantify the effects of human activity on
wildlife. Nature Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1237-z
DOING ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF COVID
Eduardo G. Neves
Professor of Archaeology, University of São Paulo
The practice of archaeology has been changing a lot in the last years, and it is likely
that the current pandemic will have major consequences that will further accelerate
these changes. Archaeology is a costly endeavor, and overall in the world one sees a
drastic reduction in funding from public and private non-profit agencies. Such cuts
parallel changes in legislation aiming at decreasing the demand for contract or
commercial archaeology, which is the larger employer in the field overall. To top this,
the constant flow of young PhDs coming out of universities delivers a population of
young academics that is larger than the number of teaching or research positions
being opened.
The colonialist history and the colonialist-embedded practices of archaeology have

never been so visible as they are today. As a consequence, archaeologists’ monopoly
on producing narratives about the past has been challenged by other interest groups
that include Indigenous people, local communities, and local governments. This
movement is forcing the discipline to move from within the limits of academia and to
establish critical dialogues with these groups. As a consequence, albeit still a valid
pursuit, the goal of knowing the past from its own sake is becoming harder to sustain,
especially in contexts where archaeologists work among impoverished, politically
silenced, and marginal communities.
The irony is that archaeology has never been so interesting as a discipline at it is

today. The contribution of techniques from areas such as genomics, isotope
chemistry, air-born digital imagery, and big data analyzes has been producing a small
revolution in the understanding of the past through the material record. Together
with the influence of innovative social theories, these advances confer to archaeology
a powerful voice to propose alternative narratives about the past that challenge long-
held but never-tested hypotheses. Such power derives also from the position that
archaeology occupies between the social and the natural sciences. Long seen as a
source of epistemological insecurity, this sometimes ambiguous place gives
archaeology a privileged window on the deep history of the relationship among

people, other beings, and the environment, making it well prepared to participate in
the current debate on the socioenvironmental crises the world faces today.
In light of these ideas, these are the reflections I have to offer on the topics raised by
Danilyn and Yael:
Methods and Questions
Restrictions on travel and lack of funding will likely render the practice of
archaeology even more virtual and removed from fieldwork, particularly in graduate
programs that place strict time limits on the completion of dissertations (probably
more common in places such as UK than in the US). Remote analyses will become
more frequent and so will approaches such as modelling or big-data analyzes. These
are welcome developments but they run the risk of widening ever more the gap
between the centers of production of knowledge in the global north and south, in
contexts in which the north provides the syntheses (“the goods”) and the south the
data (“the raw materials”). Funding for these approaches should somehow encourage
stronger and more organic forms of collaboration among scholars and students,
financing, for instance the travelling of students from the south to the north to
enhance part of their training while remote research is done.
Methods and Ethics
The high costs involved in funding archaeology have always meant that the capacity
to ask research questions and define research agendas rests with those in positions of
power and reflects asymmetries in archaeology. The context of the pandemic forces
one even more to question those who establish research questions and to what extent
these questions contribute to making the practice of archaeology more socially
relevant. In many places, such as in the Amazon where I work, local populations are
the ones being hit hardest by Covid-19, and one should question the relevance of doing
traditional fieldwork in places that have been devastated by the pandemic. That
means opening the discipline even more to honest and practical dialogues about who
benefits from archaeology and allowing for greater flexibility to modify proposed
research goals once one is in the field.
Ethics and Questions
The most important question an archaeologist should always ask is, why am I doing
this? This question should perhaps be the first one addressed by people applying for
grants, and the answer should not be only scientific or academic. Once more, the
practice of archaeology involves high costs, long distance trips, and, in many cases,
literally messing around in people’s backyards. The transportation of samples to
laboratories or museums, sometimes far away from the places where they were
uncovered, is another complicated and costly ordeal. Archaeology must find a way to
somehow be relevant in addressing the political and social problems the world faces
today. Doing this will force the discipline more self-critical and interesting.
A final suggestion. The practice of archaeology is a collective endeavor and

historically highly dependent on fieldwork. Although the frequency and opportunities
may get more restricted due to limitations on travelling and funding, fieldwork will
remain a basic pillar of the discipline. Over twenty years, my experience teaching
free-of-charge field schools in the Brazilian Amazon has shown me that these are
wonderful opportunities to form networks of students, build a sense of comradery,
and empower local archaeologists and other people interested in the past. I think that
opportunities for funding multi-year field schools or field workshops could have an
important impact on the further development of the discipline in these critical times.
COVID-19 AND THE “NEW WORLD” ORDER
Ndukuyakhe Ndlovu
Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Pretoria
It is “normal” to live in a world facing challenges of various kinds as a result of social

injustice, colonialism, climate change, conflict, or medical inadequacies. Such
challenges are often geographically defined and do not necessarily affect the whole
globe at once. I always consider these occurrences to be short-term disturbances of
the equilibrium to which we have become accustomed as humans living in specific
geographical locations around the world. As human beings, we all have experienced
challenges that somehow disturb our “normality.” But a significant majority of the
world population has not experienced a phenomenon in our living memory that has
caused as much disruption as COVID-19. We, therefore, do not have any experience to
guide us in adapting to the world in which we find ourselves. As we reflect on how
COVID-19 is affecting our lives, personally and professionally, a number of issues
come to the fore. I focus on three factors to review how the pandemic is challenging us
to rethink our approach in terms of how we conduct our research activities. These are
(i) research questions and methods, (ii) research methods and ethics, and (iii) ethics
and research questions.
Research Questions and Methods
My view is that COVID-19 has significantly affected research activities, and this shall
continue to be the case for some time. I am not convinced that any anthropological or
archaeological research can take place under the prevailing circumstances. This is
the case even though the COVID-19’s impact differs across the world, with some
countries significantly less affected than others.
While there might be research questions that explore how people, especially
indigenous communities, are responding to life under the pandemic, I am not
convinced the situation allows for anthropological and archaeological research
activities. It is very insensitive to be “throwing” research questions at people who are
faced with the most difficult circumstances in their living memory. It is my considered
view that those who insist on undertaking any research activity under the pandemic
are simply interested in their “academic” output, in churning out “quick”
publications. I do not attach much regard to anthropological COVID-19-related
research because of the circumstances under which it is gathered and the methods
applied. Those who continue insisting on research activities do so without being
considerate of the societies within which they collect research data.
In discussion with colleagues, it emerged that the presence of outsiders can be viewed
as a threat through which people from the “cities” are bringing the pandemic closer to
their study areas, which are largely in rural localities. As we know, the major
economic hubs around the world are ravaged by COVID-19. Our thinking was that our
“foreignness” would affect how people interact with us, resulting in a discomfort that
would directly affect research outcomes. To stand in solidarity with the most affected
communities, it is my view that we should not conduct any anthropological and
archaeological research activities, whatever our research methods may be. This is my
view even where our methods dictate that the data is to be collected by various local
members of the societies we are researching. This is not an ideal time for research.
Instead, we must be compassionate with the most affected people from the various
areas where we conduct our research projects.
Research Methods and Ethics
Our research context, even before the outbreak of COVID-19, was already defined by a
number of concerns expressed especially by scholars based in so-called developing
nations. Some researchers have “silently” argued against the increasing presence of
foreign teams in their countries. Their charge is that such teams do not apply the
same ethical standards they always promise to abide by. In addition, foreign research
teams are accused of not investing in developing local collaborators so that they can
themselves become active researchers who can stand on their own. These local
collaborators exist only in the shadows of their “barons.” It could be argued,

therefore, that local collaborators are simply involved to fulfill a “political” mandate
and satisfy government administrative requirements for research permits. What this
illustrates, therefore, is that the major intention behind these collaborations is not to
significantly develop research capacity in so-called developing countries. The
unspoken goal, instead, is to keep the status quo in place so that the area involved can
remain “continuously fertile” for research by foreigners. This says a lot about who is
actually producing knowledge, with others left to consume knowledge produced
within their areas by outsiders.
The outbreak of the pandemic gives us a moment of “pause” in which to reflect upon
and revise such relationships, which are abusive of local collaborators who are used
only to get research funding and research permits within specific localities. I even
have had foreign-based colleagues use my name as a collaborator without ever
contacting me. Even to this day, these colleagues have not had the decency to say
anything to me about these research projects (in which I was supposedly involved). It
gets even worse than this, and yet the greater majority of my African colleagues
would not have the courage to speak out and challenge these kinds of relationships.
More importantly, I believe COVID-19 has clearly illustrated how we have failed to
transform our disciplines. It is evident that while we have researched and over-
researched some communities around the world for many years, we have not done
enough for these communities for them to have any of their own become trained
specialists who can stand by themselves and run big research projects. I am not
necessarily arguing there are no such instances within the African continent, but my
view is that they are too few considering how much anthropological research has been
conducted on the continent. How many indigenous professionals are actively
producing knowledge in our research fields such that we can say that a meaningful
transformation, and not just a smokescreen, is taking place? I have seen other
colleagues beginning to add their informants as co-authors in research publications,
but for me, this is not enough of a transformation nor can I even begin to consider it
as such. COVID-19 is thus highlighting the growing gap of inequality not only in our
broader societies but within our very own academic disciplines. It is ethically clear to
me, therefore, that we need to transform the production of knowledge. The equality
that researchers are supposedly aiming for is still only a pipe dream. Researchers
make politically correct statements, but it simply ends there. Foreign researchers
have always led the game and played it with their research subjects by their rules.
Ethics and Research Questions
The greatest challenge is that our training of students has not really changed over the
years. As a result, researchers and their students are not as compassionate as they
ought to be. Indeed, we have adapted our language to a certain extent. It is now
common to talk of community archeology, public archaeology, postcolonial
archaeology, and so on. I would argue that, to a large extent, this is enforced upon us
by the need to be politically correct as well as what I call the “feel good factor.” This is
a good approach for pleasing potential funders, but the reality is that our practice is
very different. We need to step back and reflect on the manner in which we have been
dealing with our research subjects and the nature of the knowledge we have produced
over the years.
In addition, anthropological and archaeological researchers have, in my view, become

“victims” of the expectation that their research must be both objective and
considerate of their informants. The two goals are contradictory in my opinion. Being
considerate means being biased, and that is not objectivity. It has never been my view
that objectivity is achievable under any research circumstances. As researchers, our
identity plays an active role in our research projects, and we should accept that. My
thinking is that we should stop trying to achieve the impossible, since we cannot
distance ourselves from who we are, which is shaped by our various social, economic,
religious, and political experiences. Researchers must begin seeing themselves in
their projects, and this begins with them taking ownership of the voice in which they
write their publications. It has been academic tendency for researchers to hide their
subjectivity behind the use of the third person when they write up their research
findings.
Reflecting back on these three factors (research questions and methods, research
methods and ethics, and ethics and research questions), it is evident that
anthropological and archaeological disciplines must still continue with their
transformative efforts. The COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to stop and reflect
on the road traveled thus far before some “normality” returns. It is my expectation
that it will take another year or so for this to happen. What is most important is that
our research projects must be meaningful to the communities within which we work.
Our research questions, therefore, should always not just be informed by our project’s
intentions, but also by the difference our findings are likely to make in the lives of our
respondents. We need to throw away the unachievable goal of objectivity and actively
embrace subjectivity. That will not necessarily mean that we are unethical, but it will
go a long way towards enabling us to be successful in making our research projects
relevant.
WHAT DOES AN ETHICAL PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY LOOK LIKE

IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC?
Sheela Athreya
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Texas A&M University
Recently my senior graduate student Brittany reminded me that I once told her: “one
of the most powerful contributions anthropologists can make is to dictate the
narrative of human history.” This was said as a cautionary statement—an
acknowledgement that we exercise a privilege, power, and voice with whatever we

publish and thus we have to do so mindfully. Brittany’s reminder came at an
especially poignant time. Just days after Danilyn invited me to consider
anthropological ethics in a post-pandemic world, George Floyd was murdered. The
African-American community was burdened to call on us yet again, for the nth time,
to acknowledge and at least start to repair the centuries of pain and damage inflicted
by slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. So when our roundtable group finally met,
we inevitably could not disentangle our discussion from the bigger-picture ethics of
anthropology in a world where institutional structures that have already shifted once
because of COVID-19 need to shift again.
So here I share my thoughts on what an ethical Physical Anthropology would look like
that accounts for the changes we all face due to the pandemic, but that goes beyond
focusing on the immediate issues of travel restrictions, precautions when visiting
museums or research collections, and lost training opportunities for students. Our
work takes place within a historically mediated global power structure. Physical
anthropology (in the strict sense) was built on the violent acquisition of human
bodies, on their objectification and dehumanization, and on using them to rationalize
colonialist and genocidal policies. I, my students and my closest colleagues work
primarily with skeletal collections housed in museums around the world and derived
from this violent history. There have always been ethical issues surrounding the
study of these materials, so the need for new ways to conduct research in a world
transformed by the pandemic dovetails well with the opportunity to implement more
ethical practices using these data.
Before the roundtable discussion I asked my junior colleague Cody Prang, and my
three graduate students Brittany Moody, Harshita Jain, and Missy Gandarilla to share
their perspectives, fears for the future, and ideas for moving forward. Many of us
recognize that we are not faced with the massive and possibly permanent losses in
data collection methods that other anthropologists face. Our work can proceed
despite the many restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to remote
technology. While there is no substitute for physically handling bones for a
comparative anatomist or morphologist, we can still address many of our questions
using some form of online data such as 3D surface scans, CT scans, and/or existing
datasets (à la Howells and Hanihara). Students are still stressed out about how to
revise their projects, but they are not completely abandoning them in large numbers
the way that many of our colleagues in other sub-fields—and even within Biological
Anthropology broadly— are.
I paint the cup for Physical Anthropologists as half full out of respect to our colleagues
whose work simply cannot be done remotely. But the reality is that we are in no way
ready to pivot to this “simple” solution of online data. Our community knows this,
and it will be a long road for us to get there. But failing to do that will be a massive
failure of our generation to future generations of scholars.
The biggest obstacle we face is that physical anthropologists (and I am not innocent in
this) are notorious for our resistance to providing access to our data, and our
tendency to monopolize it indefinitely in the name of “ongoing study.” This
unintentionally but unforgivably reproduces a premise at the origins of our subfield:
the idea that we “own” the bodies we study. Indeed, John Hawks points out that the
term “sharing” invokes an act of charity as opposed to a healthy and even essential
scientific practice that allows for replication and repeatability.
The resistance to providing public access to data in my subspecialty of

paleoanthropology has also created clubs of “haves” and “have nots.” Eager new
graduate students with creative projects often struggle with implementing their ideas
and getting funding because they are at the wrong institution or work with the wrong
advisor to get access to data that they should rightfully have. This usually correlates
directly with access to economic resources. It is impossible to diversify our field when
data access exists along these axes of privilege which are reinforced in such deep
structural ways.
Requiring the deposition of data into a public database, as is done by the National
Institutes of Health, would be an important step forward for our subfield, and many
senior scholars have been calling for this for a while (e.g., Turner 2005; Turner and
Mulligan 2020). Our field has been discussing the ethics, practicalities, and
considerations of such practices (e.g. Weber 2001, 2015) for over a decade, but
without significant change. Funding agencies such as Wenner-Gren and NSF could
play a major role in forcing a cultural shift by implementing strict accountability
mechanisms such as requiring a detailed timeline for data deposition into a public
repository, constructing and overseeing data repositories, denying additional
funding, or even revoking funding, as is done by other organizations. These
requirements would serve to signal the massive importance of data sharing,
particularly in a post-pandemic research landscape, and begin to dismantle the
tradition of Western scientific ownership over biological data derived from human
bodies.
But on the flip side, as powerfully noted by Rick Smith and Jess Kolopenuk
(forthcoming), requiring data sharing has its own colonial overtones. All people, but
especially historically marginalized populations, are entitled to sovereignty over their
biological data and their ancestor’s bodies. In that respect, our Black, Indigenous,
and international partners require consultation on this matter; it is not as simple as a
field-wide mandate.
Relying heavily on virtual data would also impact our museum and university partners
because it would shift how we fund infrastructure and capacity building, particularly
within international institutions. Many museums and universities charge bench fees,
which are critical to the financial health of their staff ’s own research and ability to
curate the materials safely. If we emphasize data collection using online databases,
funding agencies and scholars could incorporate budgetary line items that provide
support for the personnel and technology needed to scan collections and
construct/oversee online databases, perhaps replacing bench fees with the payment of
comparable fees to access these virtual collections
It may be inevitable for us to default to focusing on lab-based research (such as

genomics) when we are restricted for ethical reasons from doing fieldwork. But as
one of our roundtable participants, Eduardo Neves, pointed out beautifully, if we shift
our focus too much in this direction we are in a sense re-colonizing our field. If poor
countries are not provided the capacity building support that is required to participate
in these remote discussions, then we are inevitably shifting the power of narrating our
past to a few predominantly White researchers. This ties back into what I told
Brittany. If we do indeed have the power to narrate human history, I hope we can use
this transformational period to shift resources, and authorship, to historically

marginalized voices.
References
Turner, Trudy R., ed. Biological anthropology and ethics: From repatriation to genetic
identity. SUNY Press, 2005.
Turner, Trudy R., and Connie J. Mulligan. “Data sharing in biological anthropology:
Guiding principles and best practices.” American journal of physical anthropology 170,
no. 1 (2019): 3-4.
Weber, Gerhard W. “Virtual anthropology (VA): a call for glasnost in

paleoanthropology.” The Anatomical Record: An Official Publication of the American
Association of Anatomists 265, no. 4 (2001): 193-201.
Weber, Gerhard W. “Virtual anthropology.” American journal of physical anthropology 156

(2015): 22-42.
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21/10/23, 16:23 The Future of Anthropological Research: Ethics, Questions, and Methods in the Age of COVID-19: Part 2 | Wenner-Gren

Anna Agbe Davies

The Future of Anthropological Research: Ethics,

Contributed by: Scroll down

DISPATCHES ON “THE FIELD”

Anna Agbe Davies

“The field” matters so much to us in part because it is a site of enculturation. It may

Figure 1. Photo by Anna Agbe Davis

Figure 2. Photo by Anna Agbe-Davis

Because, of course, we are not perfectly autonomous actors. We are constrained by

Figure 3. Image by Harold Agbe-Davies

Atkin, Albert. 2013. Peirce’s Theory of Signs In The Stanford Encyclopedia of

FIELD WORK AND FUTURES DURING THE CORONAVIRUS

For primatologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and human biologists whose work

Some forms of research in biological anthropology and archaeology might be possible

In considering how the coronavirus pandemic is likely to impact anthropological

DOING ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF COVID

The colonialist history and the colonialist-embedded practices of archaeology have

The irony is that archaeology has never been so interesting as a discipline at it is

archaeology a privileged window on the deep history of the relationship among

Methods and Questions

Methods and Ethics

Ethics and Questions

A final suggestion. The practice of archaeology is a collective endeavor and

COVID-19 AND THE “NEW WORLD” ORDER

It is “normal” to live in a world facing challenges of various kinds as a result of social

Research Questions and Methods

Research Methods and Ethics

collaborators exist only in the shadows of their “barons.” It could be argued,

Ethics and Research Questions

In addition, anthropological and archaeological researchers have, in my view, become

WHAT DOES AN ETHICAL PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY LOOK LIKE

acknowledgement that we exercise a privilege, power, and voice with whatever we

The resistance to providing public access to data in my subspecialty of

It may be inevitable for us to default to focusing on lab-based research (such as

this transformational period to shift resources, and authorship, to historically

Weber, Gerhard W. “Virtual anthropology (VA): a call for glasnost in

Weber, Gerhard W. “Virtual anthropology.” American journal of physical anthropology 156

© Copyright 2023 Wenner-Gren Foundation Website by Studio Airport & September

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