Archaeologists around the world are condemning the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology for laying off 18 researchers, in particular one of the world's leading archaeobotanists, Naomi Miller, who has been in the field for 30 years. News of the planned layoffs, announced late last month, has ricocheted through the global archaeology community, with help from several academics who have notified more than 1000 of their colleagues.
Miller's "departure from the field will have serious ramifications for many on-going archaeological projects throughout" the Near East, where she studies plant remains to better understand agricultural economies, wrote Melinda Zeder, director of the archaeobiology program at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., in a letter sent last weekend to Richard Hodges, the museum's director. Hodges was traveling and not available to speak with ScienceInsider, but spokesperson Pam Kosty said that "it's obviously difficult for everybody at the museum, these layoffs," and "we're doing what we can to try to save people." Like many other museums and nonprofits, the University of Pennsylvania Museum has been hard-hit by a sinking endowment and a difficult fundraising environment.
In an interview, Zeder, who has collaborated with Miller, sympathized with the museum's plight but argued that while the museum has presented the cuts as a solution to a short-term budget shortfall, "it seems to me counterintuitive to take measures that have a permanent impact on just the thing you're trying to save."
"There's quite an active campaign" to protest the loss of Miller, which will be effective at the end of May, Zeder says. "We're just stunned."
—Jennifer Couzin
12/16 update:
The director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology tells ScienceInsider this morning that the layoffs had been mislabeled and that many of those affected would be able to garner outside grants and stay on at the museum before the end of the May deadline. “We’re starting to think strategically to safeguard people like Naomi [Miller],” says Richard Hodges, “as opposed to facing up to the fact in 6 months time that we won’t have any choices.” Hodges says museum staff are committed to helping Miller and the others find grant money from the university’s endowment, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and other sources and says he’s “very certain” that Miller will still be at the museum on 1 June. “We have no interest in getting rid of decent scholars,” Hodges says. The 18 affected scholars were originally brought in on grants but in the last several years have been supported under the museum’s operating budget.
In response to Sarpaki Anaya, firing the research scientists and dismantling the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA) is disastrous for archaeology and scientific research at Penn as a whole. Remember that these scientists are not simply wage laborers. They are embedded in a research community and have laboratories, work with students at Penn and elsewhere, and have current projects with materials housed at the UPenn Museum. When you fire these researchers, whole communities of cutting edge research about the past begin to unravel. Also, it sets a dangerous precedent for other research institutions to become just another tourist museum of objects. Soon, other museums will cut their research budgets under the pretext of scientific research being a "luxury" and expendable rather than something integral to the collective advancement of knowledge.
These research scientists also have numerous volunteers from the public who have volunteered for years and sometimes tens of years. They work with the public in a very tangible and long-lasting way. To fire them would scatter the community because they would eventually have to find jobs elsewhere (very difficult under current circumstances), set up new laboratories, and painstakingly revive communities of research and public involvement. Unfortunately, the UPenn museum was one of the last places in the world where Museum collections and cutting edge research intersected. The UPenn Museum also recently helped produce a Rhodes scholar who coordinated a new exhibit on the Lenape. This would not have been possible without the open community of research that makes the UPenn Museum so distinctive and unique in the world...
In response to Sarpaki Anaya, firing the research scientists and dismantling the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA) is disastrous for archaeology and scientific research at Penn as a whole. Remember that these scientists are not simply wage laborers. They are embedded in a research community and have laboratories, work with students at Penn and elsewhere, and have current projects with materials housed at the UPenn Museum. When you fire these researchers, whole communities of cutting edge research about the past begin to unravel. Also, it sets a dangerous precedent for other research institutions to become just another tourist museum of objects. Soon, other museums will cut their research budgets under the pretext of scientific research being a
The following is the petition to support the Upenn Museum Researchers.
Petition for Penn Museum Researchers
"To: ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND THE CONCERNED COMMUNITY AT LARGE
To whom it may, it should or it would concern,
We the undersigned, academics and graduate students who are engaged with the future of archaeology, are deeply troubled by the recent announcement of the termination of eighteen research specialist positions at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the abolishing of those research positions, and the shutting down of their associated laboratories and centers such as MASCA (the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology). We understand this gesture as a wholesale dismantling of the research mission of the University Museum, which has been at the forefront of international archaeological studies since the museum's foundation in 1887. We would like to bring to public attention that this is a historic decision in the long-term history of the University Museum, and we reject that this is simply a strategic tightening of the belts at the time of a financial crisis, as it has been widely claimed by the Museum administrators in the popular media. "
continued on the petition website.
The article reads:
Miller's "departure from the field will have serious ramifications for many on-going archaeological projects throughout" the Near East.
Why? Shouldn't those projects be paying her salary for her work rather than UPenn? Or maybe better yet they can find locals in the countries where she worked to do her job instead.
When the archaeobotanists learn how to communicate the importance, relevance and excitement of their work to the public, they will get the money needed to continue it.
Archaeology is not just a make-work employment scheme. The main reason people seem to object to these layoffs is because their colleagues are losing their jobs. Can someone here tell us what the public loss of these firings will be? Will anyone except other archaeologists be affected? If the answer is no, then you have the answer as to why these jobs are a burden and not a benefit.
I am really stunned with the short sight of the director of Penn Museum to cut 18 researchers, especially if it happens to be Richard Hodges. If I am right he used to be at Sheffield University and full of enthusiasm for the field in the early 1980's, where I was a student then! What has happened?? This lack of long term "sight" for all universities, institutes, governments is leading to disaster...What are we doing? Cutting our own fingers??? What are our plans for the future? Are we only thinking about ourselves so much and not investing in the next generation of scientists?? People like Naomi Miller and the other 17 scientists, are obviously peer researchers in their field, an asset to their country! Have we stopped to think what the future reserves if we just "shelf" their research and scientific knowledge?? Please =whoerver is in decision-making_ think about the future,..philosophise and then decide!! Otherwise, a world with just technocrates will be a VERY POOR WORLD INDEED....
We, myself and a dozen of colleagues in the Institute I am in charge of, are surprised and so sorry about the decision of Penn Museum to cut off several position, and especially Naomi Miller's one. Most of us, young and seniors archaeologists have had the occasion to collaborate with Naomi, especially in Syria, Turkey and Iran in the past decades and recently.
From her outstanding research, she is certainly a proeminent figure in Near Eastern archaeology. Her contribution in the training of young people from various countries from the States, Europe and Middle East is remarkable and well aknowledged by everybody. Certainly Naomi Miller greatly contributed and still contributes to the fame of MASCA.
Rémy Boucharlat
We do hope Penn Museum will reconsider its decision
I am personally very sorry for this decision but still hoping that it will be possible to avoid this radical cut down.
At any rate, it once again prooves the weak position of the "Humanities" in Germany as well as abroad.
Uwe Finkbeiner
I am really sorry and upset (and also surprised) about the decision of Penn Museum to cut 18 researchers, among which in particular a famous and distinguished scholar such as Naomi MILLER! The archaeobotanists with the Miller's experience and competence are very few in the world and her contribution to many of the most important archaeological projects in the Near East, and, more in general, to the archaeology of that crucial area which was the seat of the most ancient and formative processes in the history of human societies, has been, and is going to be, fundamental. Her outstanding research work has greatly contributed to the understanding of the agricultural economies of the ancient Near Eastern civilizations. I warmly hope that Penn Museum will reconsider this very negative decision.
Marcella Frangipane