April 11, 2025
The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) is deeply concerned about recent news of funding cuts and staff reductions at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The mission of the National Endowment for the Humanities is to serve and strengthen our nation by making the humanities available to all Americans. Like the AIA, NEH serves scholars and the public by advancing knowledge through support for research and scholarship and through public engagement in classrooms, living rooms, and public spaces.
NEH grants support the building blocks of American civil society, helping to examine the human condition, promote civic education, understand our cultural heritage, and foster mutual respect for diverse beliefs and cultures. Grants bring museum exhibitions across America, strengthen teaching in schools, create documentaries and podcasts, facilitate groundbreaking research, and preserve and expand access to cultural and historical artifacts.
Over the past three decades, each facet of the AIA’s institutional mission has been supported through funding from the NEH, a few examples of which follow:
Excavate. From 2020 to 2023, the AIA received funding from NEH to distribute small grants to 34 fieldwork projects in 17 countries on 5 continents in support of post-fieldwork research and publication. These AIA-NEH grants facilitated the analysis, interpretation, and publication of archaeological sites around the globe, bringing new insight into the history of the human past.
Advocate. The AIA and the American Schools of Overseas Research (ASOR) jointly received a Chairman’s Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2017 to support a two-day invitational summit in Washington, D.C. Representatives from organizations engaged in monitoring damage and destruction of archaeological sites met to cooperate on the protection of heritage sites amid ongoing conflict in Syria.
Educate. A month-long AIA/NEH Summer Institute for high school teachers in 1997 led to the creation of lesson plans and a publication, “Cargoes from Three Continents: Ancient Mediterranean Trade in Modern Archaeology.” The work aimed at enriching the precollegiate curriculum by exploring the importance of archaeology to understanding the ancient roots of modern exchange systems and the interconnectedness of ancient cultures.
NEH funding has long supported the AIA’s professional members in developing cutting-edge archaeological research, sharing public scholarship, and undertaking critical documentation and digitization efforts. Many of these projects have been featured in the AIA’s flagship scholarly journal, American Journal of Archaeology, and popular magazine, Archaeology, inspiring public and academic awareness of human activity in the past and its meaning in the present.
The AIA supports the mission of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the agency staff that make that mission possible. We call upon Members of Congress to ensure that this vital government agency continues to fulfill the mandate set out by its congressional charter, which declares, “Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens. It must therefore foster and support a form of education, and access to the arts and the humanities, designed to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.”
The AIA invites members to share information about their experiences with NEH funding and NEH-funded projects in the comments section below to give our audiences a wider appreciation for the valuable work of the NEH.
Notifications
Jodi Magness
I have been fortunate to receive two NEH grants, which supported the writing of two award-winning books. I could not have written these books without funding from the NEH, for which I am most grateful. I urge everyone to support the NEH and its mission.