March 2021 • The SAA Archaeological Record 5 ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE STUDY OF OUTBREAKS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC COEVOLUTION, EMERGENCE, AND RESURGENCE OF PATHOGENS THROUGH HISTORY Gerardo Gutiérrez and Catherine Cameron Gerardo Gutiérrez is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). Catherine Cameron is a professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at CU. he COVID-19 pandemic has dominated our world for the past year, and it has heightened interest in epidemic dis- eases. In June 2020, together with Maria Spyrou of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, we pre- sented a webinar for the SAA with the same title as this article. Our goal was to provide an overview of important epidemics in the past and to explore how archaeology and genomics contrib- ute to knowledge about those epidemics. Personal commitments prevented Maria Spyrou from participating with us on this arti- cle; therefore, we decided to narrow our focus to the New World and the introduction and spread of smallpox, one of the diseases that repeatedly ravaged Indigenous Americans for centuries after the arrival of Europeans. We believe that archaeologists can contribute to a broader knowledge of pandemics by revisit- ing the social factors behind ancient epidemics, gathering data from archaeological sites associated with specifc outbreaks, and analyzing skeletal collections to better understand the com- plex dynamics and interactions of ancient diseases in changing ecosystems, demographics of human populations, and cultural practices. Improved methodologies and techniques, including molecular analysis of ancient DNA (aDNA), assisted with poly- merase chain reaction (PCR) and new sequencing methods like isothermal amplifcation, ofer key insights (Spyrou et al. 2019; see also Hofman and Warinner 2019; Sedig 2019). Past epidemics have impacted large sectors of the population in afected regions, disrupted economic activities, and increased social unrest. A pandemic like COVID-19 demands that we assess our weaknesses and strengths as a global society, or as societies across the world. The present pandemic encourages us to pause and to remember that, despite dwelling in artifcial environments provided by powerful social and technological systems, we are still subject to ecological checks. It is precisely during moments of crisis when we can better observe structural inequalities within our home communities and our global com- munity more broadly. These are the right moments for taking political action to attack the root causes that produce and main- tain vulnerabilities and inequalities. Preparing This Article within the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States During the frst two weeks of March 2020, many universities around the United States decided to stop in-person classes and quickly moved onto online platforms. Both students and professors found themselves struggling to adapt to the new circumstances. During February 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 virus had spread quickly from “ground zero” in Wuhan, China, to most of the metropolises of Europe and Asia, and from there to the rest of the world, includ- ing the United States. By the end of March, almost 186,000 people had been infected in the United States alone (Figure 1), and the U.S. death toll reached 3,602 (Figure 2). Things worsened in subsequent weeks, and by the end of April, the United States reached 1,061,637 infections and 58,804 deaths. Economic impacts quickly followed, with almost 37 million Americans temporarily unemployed due to uncoordinated quarantines that nevertheless managed to keep the infection rate fat during May and June, as well as reducing the number of deaths from 41,990 in May to 22,903 in June. Several police cases involving abuses of Black Americans in late May ignited civil protests and riots against police brutality in the metropolitan areas of the country during the summer. The month of July saw a new peak of infection with 1,922,685 infected individuals, followed by a steady rise in deaths that reached 25,571 that month and another 30,180 in August. The number of infections across the United States was slightly reduced in September (1,212,702 people), but during October the infection peaked again to more than 1,910,331 people. During November, as we completed the frst draft of this article, the United States counted an unprecedented 4,416,616 infected people. While working on editorial corrections for the article, we looked with dismay at how the total number of infections during the month of December reached 6,335,233 people, while the number of absolute deaths more than doubled from November (37,324 people) T