Rules of the Road: The Intersection of Data Recovery, Highway Construction, and Pandemic Management

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Pandemic Fieldwork: Doing Fieldwork During a Pandemic" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Over the past 15 years, the Missouri Department of Transportation has conducted multiple archaeological investigations, including several large-scale data recovery projects, along major highways in St. Louis county and city. Each succeeding project has had to overcome new and seemingly unique obstacles in order to ultimately become successful: accelerated construction schedules, looting and urban crime, extreme weather, and unanticipated finds. With the Department’s latest efforts along the I-64 corridor through the heart of the city, archaeologists have had to add “planning for a pandemic” to the ever-expanding list. Excavation was initiated in March 2020 but had to shut down after only three weeks due to spiking infection rates in the city. After some serious discussion and planning, excavation was reinitiated in August 2020. This paper will address the measures taken to deal with COVID-19, and how that affected the conduct of the field work and the success of the project.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Pandemic Fieldwork: Doing Fieldwork During a Pandemic   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology