Current challenges to archaeology in the United States: a story in three crises

Archaeology in the United States is facing unprecedented challenges.Changes to federal legislation on cultural heritage protections, attacks on museums and higher education institutions, divestment from research funding agencies and mass layoffs within government departments have created a perfect storm of daily challenges in the teaching and practice of archaeology in tandem with concern for the future of the discipline.While the Trump administration is not targeting archaeology per se, the current precarious status is a confluence of three crises that are having an outsized impact on our field.I hope in the following to illuminate these crises, some of which rarely make it into the national or international news cycles.