Pandemic Affects Antioch
The 500-pound gorilla in the room is coronavirus. Even though I planned on continuing to write about the geopolitics of Antioch during the Roman Empire, this blog will address that gorilla and the mosaics in the context of a modern pandemic.
Our Antioch Recovery Project is shut down along with other classes; we are finishing the class portion of the course online. Even at a major university, research has shut down.
There has been much written about the many important scientific and medical (ironically, many potentially life-saving) projects, often longitudinal, that will stop precipitously because of this. Yet, often forgotten, is the impact on non “STEM” research. Even though we continue our research online for this project, long-anticipated field trips to see other Antioch mosaics at Princeton and beyond are canceled. My own research has been impacted, too. I can’t get to the library to borrow or use sources from our rare books collection.
The biggest impact to me, however, involves collaborations with others. For the past several weeks, my research for my next blog was on the “missing” Antioch mosaic sent to Cuba on July 8th, 1937[1]. Via the internet, I was able to isolate its last documented location in a report from Princeton University. According to the report, the mosaic’s provenance was Villanova University, Havana, Cuba. For context, after Castro’s 1959 revolution, he banned religious celebrations, seized Church properties, and expelled Catholic priests. Religious buildings were nationalized and “repurposed” (to borrow from the current pandemic language).
So, I began my adventure. I reached out to a colleague and dear friend, a History professor at the University of Havana, who had served as my translator when I participated in an archeology internship in Cuba in 2018. He told me that after Villanova University and its church were closed, it was abandoned for some time. Even the church that accompanied it was almost destroyed. Now, the University is a technical institute in Playa Municipality of Havana Province.
He shared my energy for this historical mystery and agreed to travel the following week to the site to try to find the mosaic and return photographs to me. This would help our Antioch Recovery Project confirm not only the location of a missing Antioch mosaic but give us an idea of its condition, as well.
That was three weeks ago. Since then, Cuba reported its first coronavirus infection and death statistics. I haven’t heard from him about the project. I suspect that he is well and that Cuba is taking public health precautions by locking down the island.
Yet, each day that goes by, I wonder. My concern is compounded by technology. About one week ago, my phone’s photo app pulled up some photos of us at the Bay of Pigs last spring break. It was only a year ago, but in many ways that carefree time period seems as long ago as the third century in which the mosaics were created.
[1] http://vrc.princeton.edu/archives/items/show/15440
Tommy Tripp