Krysta Ryzewski (ew6015)

Anthropology

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

Expertise: Archaeology and Historic Preservation

Research areas: North America, Caribbean, Atlantic World

Research topics: Cities; islands; diaspora, immigration, and slavery; land-use; material culture and archaeometry; historic preservation; resilience, social welfare and creative expression

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

Her archaeological research combines material culture and documentary sources to understand how people navigated social pressures, systemic inequalities and environmental changes that accompanied the development of late modern-postindustrial North American cities and Caribbean island settlements.

Dr. Ryzewski practices archaeology in collaboration with local residents, community organizations, and government agencies. Through these partnerships she applies archaeological findings to examine topics of social justice, diaspora/immigration, and historic preservation. Her expertise in materials science, archaeometry, remote sensing, and digital humanities is also integrated into her research designs and dissemination practices.

Over the past two 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 is currently accepting inquiries from prospective graduate students (M.A. and Ph.D.) whose interests overlap with her expertise. Prospective graduate students are encouraged to contact the department to request more information about our graduate programs or email her directly.  

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) 

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

• James Deetz Award, Society for Historical Archaeology, 2023
• Board of Governors Award, Wayne State University, 2023
• Center for Historic Preservation Annual Book Prize, University of Mary Washington, 2022
• Career Development Chair, 2019-2020
• Explorers Club, Fellow National, 2018
• John L. Cotter Award, Society for Historical Archaeology, 2017
• Junior Faculty Research Award, Wayne State Academy of Scholars, 2016-2017
• Teaching Award, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2016

• 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 publications see: wayne.academia.edu/KrystaRyzewski

• Google Scholar