Krysta Ryzewski (ew6015)

Anthropology

3034 F/AB and 1208 Old Main (offices); 1114 Old Main (lab)

• Expertise: Archaeology, Historic preservation, Community-based reesearch, Digital humanities, Materials science/Archaeometry
• Research areas: North America (Great Lakes & Northeast), Caribbean, Atlantic World
• Research topics: Urbanization and industrialization; islands and land-use; diaspora; immigration; social justice; creative expression; identity; material culture

Dr. Ryzewski is a Professor of Anthropology with expertise in archaeology. She currently serves as Department Chair.

Her research combines data from archaeological, environmental, historical, and ethnographic sources to understand how people navigated the social and environmental transformations that accompanied the development of North American cities (over the past 400 years) and Caribbean island settlements (over the course of millennia). Her research aligns most closely with the sub-fields of historical and contemporary archaeology, but in the Caribbean she works with material culture and sites that span the past 6,000 years. 

Dr. Ryzewski practices archaeology in collaboration with local residents, community organizations, and government agencies. Through these partnerships she applies archaeological findings to examine a variety of topics, including urbanization, identity, immigration, social justice, and historic preservation. Her expertise in archaeometry (materials science) and digital humanities is also integrated into her research and dissemination practices.

Over the past three decades, she has conducted fieldwork on land and underwater in the Midwest, New England and Caribbean. Her current work involves projects on sites in Detroit, Hamtramck, Montserrat, and St. Croix. She has served multi-year terms on Wayne State's Academic Senate and the Board of Directors of Preservation Detroit. She currently serves as Chair of Michigan's State Historic Preservation Review Board and she is a member of the Education Committee for the Hamtramck Historical Museum. She co-edits the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective historical archaeology book series for the University Press of Florida. 

Dr. Ryzewski welcomes inquiries from prospective graduate students (M.A. and Ph.D.) who share common research interests. Prospective graduate students are also encouraged to contact the department to request more information about our graduate programs. Dr. Ryzewski is also keen to work with undergraduate students who are interested in gaining research experience through labwork or fieldwork.

Research projects

North America:

• Unearthing Detroit Project (PI since 2012)
• Old Hamtramck Center (PI since 2018 in collaboration with Hamtramck Historical Museum)
• Hamtramck Historic Spatial Archaeology Project | Digital Atlas & HSDI (co-PI since 2021) 
• Malcolm X House (Project Archaeologist since 2022)
• Ethnic Layers of Detroit Digital Storytelling Project (co-PI since 2014)

Caribbean:

• Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat (co-PI since 2010)
• Enduring Materialities of Colonialism (EMoC) on St. Croix, USVI (co-PI since 2020) 

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Archaeology & Engineering, Brown University, 2008-2011
• Ph.D, Anthropology, Brown University, 2008
• M.Phil, Archaeology and Heritage Management, University of Cambridge, 2003
• B.A., Archaeology, Boston University, 2001

Grants

• National Endowment for the Humanities
• National Geographic Society
• National Science Foundation
• Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
• American Association for University Women
• U.S. Department of Energy

Awards 

• Governor's Award for Historic Preservation, State of Michigan 
• Wayne State University Academy of Scholars, elected to membership 
• James Deetz Award, Society for Historical Archaeology 
• Center for Historic Preservation Annual Book Prize, University of Mary Washington 
• Explorers Club, Fellow National
• John L. Cotter Award, Society for Historical Archaeology

• Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary Places. University of Alabama Press, 2022.  Recipient of James Deetz Award, Society for Historical Archaeology, University of Mary Washington, Center for Historic Preservation Annual Book Award, and Wayne State University Board of Governors Award. 
• The Archaeological History of Montserrat in the West Indies (book co-authored with John F. Cherry), Oxbow, Oxford, 2020
• Detroit 139: Archaeology and the Future-Making of a Post-Industrial City, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 6(1), 2019
• Contemporary Archaeology and the City: Creativity, Ruination, and Political Action. (book edited with Laura McAtackney), Oxford University Press, 2017
• Archaeological assessment reveals Earth's early transformation through land use. Lucas Stephens, et al. (K. Ryzewski, contributing author), Science, 365(6456): 897-902, August 2019

• For a complete list of grants, publications, and awards see curriculum vitae above 

• Google Scholar