Krysta Ryzewski | Wayne State University (original) (raw)

Books by Krysta Ryzewski

Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary Places, 2022

An archaeologically grounded history of six legendary places in Detroit. The city of Detroit has... more An archaeologically grounded history of six legendary places in Detroit.

The city of Detroit has endured periods of unprecedented industrial growth,
decline, and revitalization between the late nineteenth century and the present.

In Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary
Places, Krysta Ryzewski presents six archaeological case studies of
legendary Detroit institutions—Little Harry speakeasy, the Ransom Gillis
house, the Blue Bird Inn, Gordon Park, the Grande Ballroom, and the Halleck
Street log cabin—that trace the contours of the city’s underrepresented
communities and their relationship to local currents of capitalism and
social justice. Through a combination of rigorous historical archaeological
research and narrative storytelling, Ryzewski deftly contextualizes the cases within the city’s current struggles, including recovery from bankruptcy, and future-oriented recovery efforts.

Detroit Remains is is the first historical archaeology book focused on Detroit and one of the few to foreground the archaeology of the Great Migration era (ca. 1915–1970). The archaeological scholarship is rooted in collaborative, community-involved, and public-facing initiatives. The case studies examine how power is and has been exercised in Detroit’s communities over the past century: how it was stripped from the city’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century residents, but also how they acquired alternative sources of agency by establishing creative and illicit economies, most of which still operated within the city’s capitalist framework.

Throughout this book, connections run deep between archaeology, heritage, politics, historic preservation, and storytelling. Detroit Remains
demonstrates how the city’s past, present, and future lie not in ruins but
in the tangible archaeological traces of the everyday lives of Detroiters and
their legacies.

Published by University of Alabama Press

Montserrat is a small island in the Leeward islands of the eastern Caribbean and at present a Bri... more Montserrat is a small island in the Leeward islands of the eastern Caribbean and at present a British Overseas Territory. It has suffered greatly in recent times, first from the devastations of Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and since 1995 from the still-ongoing eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano that has caused two-thirds of the island's population to emigrate and left half the island a dangerous exclusion zone. Archaeological research here began only in the late 1970s, but work over the past four decades has now made it possible to present an archaeological history of Montserrat, from the earliest known traces of human activity on the island about 5,000 years ago to the present.

This book draws on all the available archaeological evidence (including that from the co-authors' own island-wide survey and excavation project since 2010), as well as newly available archival documents, to trace this little island's long history and heritage. This is not the story of an isolated and remote island: Montserrat is shown rather to be a place intricately connected to the flows of people and goods that have travelled between islands and across the Atlantic at various points in time, both Amerindian and historical. Despite its small size and seeming irrelevance, Montserrat has in fact always been networked into regional and global systems of connectivity. An underlying theme of this volume is resilience. It presents insights from the archaeological and documentary evidence on how the island's inhabitants have coped with often adverse conditions throughout the course of its history-hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, slavery, disease, invasions, and impoverishment-all while remaining proudly connected to heritage that celebrates the accomplishments of island residents.

Detroit / Great Lakes Region Publications by Krysta Ryzewski

Historical Archaeology, 2024

Hamtramck, a small, century-old city completely enveloped by Detroit, is promoted by its leadersh... more Hamtramck, a small, century-old city completely enveloped by Detroit, is promoted by its leadership as “the world in 2.1 square miles.” This slogan invokes two inextricable facets of the city’s heritage and contemporary identity: Hamtramck’s longstanding reputation as a proud, working-class city that has always been welcoming to immigrants, and its significance as the former home of automotive manufacturer Dodge Main, whose operations between 1910 and 1979 positioned the city as a global industrial powerhouse. The Old Hamtramck Center Project combines historical, archaeological, and geospatial sources of data to examine the process of urban expansion in the new city, which included the dissonant relationships among local communities and the built environment. Archaeological investigations within Old Hamtramck Center consider how the city’s residents experienced the often inconsistent circumstances of rapid urbanization and civic organization as the rural village transformed into a crowded industrial city during the early 20th century.

The Oxford Handbook of the Modern Slum, 2023

In comparison with New York City’s Five Points or Boston’s North and West End neighborhoods, Detr... more In comparison with New York City’s Five Points or Boston’s North and West End neighborhoods, Detroit’s slum districts were late arrivals. Owing to the luxury of lateral space and the relatively later date of its industrialization, Detroit did not begin to grapple with issues of widespread overcrowding, sanitation, and vice until the 1860s. In contrasting Detroit’s experience with those of cities like New York and Boston, and in questioning some of the conclusions about slums that historians have drawn from other cities, it is useful to apply a long-term, archaeological perspective to understanding the evolving media depictions and official treatments of three designated slum neighborhoods between 1880 and 1920: the Potomac Quarter, Tin Can Alley, and Corktown. Historical archaeological sources – primary archival records, excavated artifacts, and land-use data – are enlisted to examine the evolution, depiction, and manipulation of slum neighborhoods in Detroit with particular attention, first, to how city officials and the media deployed rhetoric about slums to achieve particular opportunistic agendas, and, second, to how residents in targeted neighborhoods lived in ways that, at times, departed from stereotypes of slum dwellers. These sources demonstrate how the definitions of slum neighborhoods in Detroit were malleable and regularly contorted to deploy planning or political strategies that targeted for removal places or communities that were deemed “undesirable” in the name of civic improvement.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2024

Collaborative archaeology is a practice of partnership, stewardship, and accountability involving... more Collaborative archaeology is a practice of partnership, stewardship, and accountability involving professional archaeologists and community stakeholders who share interests in a project’s objectives and outcomes. Community stakeholders may include familial descendants, local residents, civic officials, non-profit organizations, tribal representatives, government agencies, commercial developers, business owners, the media, students, professionals from other fields (e.g., historic preservationists, architects, environmental scientists), and any other individuals or groups who have a vested interest in the sites that archaeologists investigate and interpret. Collaborative partnerships between archaeologists and communities take many forms, from one-time consultations to long-term initiatives that involve stakeholders in all aspects of project design, data recovery, and outcomes. Over the past generation, collaborative archaeology projects have become increasingly oriented towards political action, ethical practice, restorative justice, community welfare, and engaging social issues that extend beyond the traditional disciplinary scope of archaeology. The sheer variety of community-involved archaeology projects and their culturally specific variations across the world are impossible to convey in a single summary. Therefore, this discussion focuses on the politically engaged and action-oriented perspectives of community archaeology projects and their processes, drawing primarily from North American examples.

Over the past several years, we have seen many attacks on publicly funded and mandated archaeolog... more Over the past several years, we have seen many attacks on publicly funded and mandated archaeology in the United States. These attacks occur at the state level, where governors and state legislatures try to defund or outright eliminate state archaeological programs and institutions. We have also seen several attacks at the federal level. Some members of Congress showcase archaeology as a waste of public tax dollars, and others propose legislation to move federally funded or permitted projects forward without consideration of impacts on archaeological resources. These attacks continue to occur, and we expect them to increase in the future. In the past, a vigilant network of historic preservation and archaeological organizations was able to thwart such attacks. The public, however, largely remains an untapped ally. As a discipline, we have not built a strong public support network. We have not demonstrated the value of archaeology to the public, beyond a scattering of educational and informational programs. In this article, we—a group of archaeologists whose work has focused on public engagement—provide a number of specific recommendations on how to build a strong public constituency for the preservation of our nation’s archaeological heritage.

The Michigan Archaeologist, 2020

Sixty years ago, during the spring of 1960, Dr. Arnold Pilling of Wayne State University conducte... more Sixty years ago, during the spring of 1960, Dr. Arnold Pilling of Wayne State University conducted the first professional historical archaeological excavation project in Detroit at the site of the future Michigan Consolidated Gas Company building (20WN262), located at corner of Woodward and Jefferson Avenues across from the Detroit Riverfront. There had been several previous salvage projects undertaken in the Detroit area by relic hunters and historians in the nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries, but Pilling’s systematic excavation of historic period remains from the Gas Company site marked a turning point in the professionalization of North American urban archaeology and in the formalization of developer-funded contract archaeology.

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2019

The future-making efforts currently unfolding in Detroit have direct implications on the extent t... more The future-making efforts currently unfolding in Detroit have direct implications on the extent to which the city’s pasts will be included in the narratives of generations to come. This essay evaluates current tensions between developers and preservation-oriented stakeholders. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for considering how archaeological initiatives and anthropological treatments of heritage might fit within revitalization efforts. Examples of grassroots, community-led projects undertaken by archaeologists and local partners demonstrate the potential for archaeology to contribute to the maintenance of community heritage and the shape of the city’s future.

in Contemporary Archaeology and the City, ed. L. McAtackney and K. Ryzewski, Oxford University P... more in Contemporary Archaeology and the City, ed. L. McAtackney and K. Ryzewski, Oxford University Press, pp. 69-90

Michigan Central Station and Roosevelt Park were constructed between 1908 and 1918 as part of Det... more Michigan Central Station and Roosevelt Park were constructed between 1908 and 1918 as part of Detroit’s City Beautiful Movement. The construction process was a place-making effort designed to implant order on the urban landscape that involved the displacement of a community who represented everything that city planners sought to erase from Detroit’s city center: overcrowding, poverty, immigrants, and transient populations. Current historical archaeological research reveals how the existing ornamental landscape of Roosevelt Park masks the history of a forgotten working-class neighborhood. This synthesis of archival and material evidence details the conditions of life within the neighborhood and of a contentious, decade-long displacement struggle rooted in the inequalities of early-20th-century industrial capitalism. Positioned at the start of a century of controversial urban planning initiatives, the Roosevelt Park case study encourages understandings of displacement as a process that has diachronic and comparative dimensions, both in Detroit and in other urban settings.

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 1(1): 36-41, 2014

Detroit residents, who are accustomed to living among ruins of all shapes and sizes, tend to view... more Detroit residents, who are accustomed to living among ruins of all shapes and sizes, tend to view popular, monumental ruins like the Michigan Central Station or the Packard Plant as either anathema in urgent need of demolition or as valued places with potential for revitalization. For visitors to the city these very same ruins are frozen in time; they evoke nostalgia and awe. Non-residents’ understanding of a “ruined Detroit” is routinely gathered by gazing upon monumental ruins during a short visit or by capturing images of them on the Internet (Binelli 2012). In order to muse about the failures of modernity and industrialization that appear to make a city like Detroit exceptional, photographers only have to collect the requisite images of select types of abandoned buildings. Systematic archaeological survey, focused areas of study, or multi-scalar inquiry are of no concern; images of a train station, factory, theater, school, hospital, and a handful of empty houses are sufficient data.

Journal of Archaeological Science (53): 178-189, 2014

A geoarchaeological study was carried out to assess levels of artifact deterioration occurring in... more A geoarchaeological study was carried out to assess levels of artifact deterioration occurring in a historicperiod
urban soil during the 20th century. The study site is a former house-lot in a park created in 1919 by demolition of a residential community in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The results show that despite nearly a century of burial in an urban soil impacted heavily by pollution and other anthropogenic activity, many 19th century artifacts are remarkably well preserved. The observed weathering stability sequence of glass > bone > mortar > plaster > paint is consistent with decreasing solubility product values of the corresponding principal mineral constituent (glass < apatite < portlandite < gypsum < cerrusite). Even severely weathered 19th century nails and mortar can often be distinguished using optical petrographic
and SEM-EDAX methods. The excellent state of artifact preservation is attributed to a calcareous soil microenvironment, and artificial compaction which limited the weathering effects of water and oxygen. Artifact preservation was further enhanced by burial beneath a thick biomantle created by the casting activity of an invasive species of earthworm. However, Lumbricus terrestris may now pose the greatest threat to artifact preservation because casting and burrowing activities are decreasing bulk density, and
promoting the diffusion of air and water into the soil. Early excavation is recommended to recover artifacts in soils impacted by the combined effects of urban pollution and earthworm burrowing. Anthropogenic microparticles smaller than those normally classified as microartifacts were found to be useful indicators of human occupation.

Caribbean Publications by Krysta Ryzewski

The Routledge Handbook of Global Historical Archaeology, 2020

This chapter reviews trends and developments in Caribbean historical archaeology since 2000. It b... more This chapter reviews trends and developments in Caribbean historical archaeology since 2000. It begins by addressing the effects on the field of recent developments involving politics, natural disasters, technologies, and intellectual orientations. The overview then summarizes major contributions in the archaeology of the African diaspora and plantations, landscapes, contact-period encounters and indigenous persistence, post-emancipation conditions, and material culture studies. It also considers nascent studies of ecology, urban settings, and contemporary archaeology. A discussion of heritage management and public archaeology, practices that have become inseparable from present-day practices of Caribbean historical archaeology, concludes the overview

Archaeology Out of the Box, 2023

In the context of the tiny British Caribbean island of Montserrat, Jimmy Buffet is more prophet t... more In the context of the tiny British Caribbean island of Montserrat, Jimmy Buffet is more prophet than pop star. Shortly after Sir George Martin, the ‘fifth Beatle,’ opened Associated Independent Recording (AIR) Studios in May 1979 as a luxurious workplace for A-list musicians, Buffett and members of his Coral Reefer Band traveled to Montserrat to record their upbeat, Caribbean-infused song “Volcano.” The skyline behind AIR Studios was dominated by the peaceful green slopes of the long-dormant Soufrière Hills volcano, serving as picturesque inspiration for the ninth album of the band; a catastrophic eruption seemed just a figment of their imagination. When the volcano awoke, the fate of AIR Studios was already sealed. Six years earlier, in September 1989, category-4 hurricane Hugo swept across the island and destroyed more than 90 percent of the buildings on Montserrat. Although AIR Studios fared better than most, gaping holes and loose shingles on its roof invited rain, tropical vegetation, and animals into the buildings, and their wooden floors soon began to buckle. Thirty-two years after its closure, the site continues to be appreciated as a tangible connection to both the pop icons of the 1980s and innovations in digital recording technology that were pioneered there. Such connections, many stakeholders argue, make the buildings worth preserving as a heritage site whose global status might attract tourists to the island and thereby contribute to local revitalization efforts.

Latin American Antiquity, 2021

Only five years ago, Montserrat was a blank spot on the distribution map of islands in the Lesser... more Only five years ago, Montserrat was a blank spot on the distribution map of islands in the Lesser Antilles where petroglyphs were known. In January 2016, hikers in Soldier Ghaut, a deeply incised watercourse in the northwest of the island, came upon a panel of nine petroglyphs engraved on a nearly vertical wall of volcanoclastic tuff. Soon afterward the petroglyphs were documented by the Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project (SLAM). Then in January 2018 an additional petroglyph was spotted on a large slab of rock, detached from the rock wall on the opposite side of the ghaut. At the invitation of the Montserrat National Trust (MNT) and with European Union funding, Susana Guimarães and Christian Stouvenot traveled to Montserrat in 2018 to assist in further studies at the site. They conducted photogrammetric documentation and photography under enhanced lighting conditions and inspected the petroglyphs and their context in detail in order to advise MNT about their conservation and provisions for public access. This report presents this new group of petroglyphs and their landscape setting and considers questions of dating and interpretation.

Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean: Dearchaizing the Archaic (Hofman and Antczak, eds), 2019

This chapter describes a newly discovered site of Archaic Age date on Montserrat, the first known... more This chapter describes a newly discovered site of Archaic Age date on Montserrat, the first known site on the island. Previously, the oldest archaeological site was Trants, an Early Ceramic settlement with earliest colonization dates of around 500 BC. The site at Upper Blakes may document human activity on Montserrat more than two millennia earlier, thus placing it among the earliest known sites in the Lesser Antilles. Here we recount the circumstances leading to the discovery of Upper Blakes, describe the site and its setting, summarize and comment on the lithic material and its technology (especially in comparison with nearby Antigua), present its radiocarbon AMS date and reflect on the wider significance of Upper Blakes for the early occupation of the Lesser Antilles.

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2019

The social life of the newly created ‘laboring classes’ in the post-emancipation Caribbean has be... more The social life of the newly created ‘laboring classes’ in the post-emancipation Caribbean has been relatively unexamined across a number of disciplinary perspectives. This paper argues for the need to bring together a variety of sources to enable researchers to gain a better understanding of this important, transitional time in Montserrat’s history. Using evidence gathered from archives in the Caribbean, North America and the British Isles, materials excavated from a previously undocumented schoolhouse structure in the north of the island, and local memories of education on Montserrat, this paper illuminates an almost forgotten aspect of the lives of nineteenth-century laboring classes: the aspiration of education.

Regional Approaches to Society and Complexity (Knodell and Leppard, eds), 2017

This chapter provides an overview of established and emergent archaeological reconnaissance metho... more This chapter provides an overview of established and emergent archaeological reconnaissance methods in the Caribbean Lesser Antilles and examines how they are applied to the study of historic-period sites and landscapes. The involvement of systematic survey techniques in the study of historic landscapes is not currently a fundamental component of archaeological practice across the region. In places where they are applied, methodological approaches and objectives vary considerably, and are often tailored to accommodate particular insular environments, colonial histories, or heritage preservation initiatives. The relatively few existing examples of multi-method landscape survey succeed in shifting research perspectives from a focus on the high-visibility industrial remains of individual plantation estates to wider landscapes of production and exploitation, viewed comparatively and regionally. In broadening the horizons of Caribbean historical archaeology, these pioneering landscape-based studies raise issues that demand further attention, most notably, those of scale and the comparability of survey data between islands.

Caribbean Irish Connections

Detroit Remains: Archaeology and Community Histories of Six Legendary Places, 2022

An archaeologically grounded history of six legendary places in Detroit. The city of Detroit has... more An archaeologically grounded history of six legendary places in Detroit.

The city of Detroit has endured periods of unprecedented industrial growth,
decline, and revitalization between the late nineteenth century and the present.

Published by University of Alabama Press

Historical Archaeology, 2024

The Oxford Handbook of the Modern Slum, 2023

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2024

The Michigan Archaeologist, 2020

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 2019

Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 1(1): 36-41, 2014

Journal of Archaeological Science (53): 178-189, 2014

The Routledge Handbook of Global Historical Archaeology, 2020

Archaeology Out of the Box, 2023

Latin American Antiquity, 2021

Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean: Dearchaizing the Archaic (Hofman and Antczak, eds), 2019

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2019

Regional Approaches to Society and Complexity (Knodell and Leppard, eds), 2017

Caribbean Irish Connections

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 19(2): 356-383, 2015

A major obstacle to understanding Montserrat’s sugar industry and the often- contentious social d... more A major obstacle to understanding Montserrat’s sugar industry and the often- contentious social dynamics that accompanied it has been the absence of a comprehensive study of the small Caribbean island’s plantation-era cultural landscape. We employ a multi-scalar approach, combining archival research and archaeological survey data, to trace the island’s shifting socio-cultural composition and fluctuating sugar industry over the course of two centuries (ca. 1650–1850). Adopting an island-wide perspective on the interpretation of Montserrat’s plantation-era remains, we expand the breadth and depth of understandings about the island’s sugar society through comparative, multi-sited analyses. Our findings underscore the importance of extending Caribbean plantation studies beyond individual estates.

In Archaeologies of Mobility and Movement, M.C. Beaudry and T.G. Parno (editors), New York: Springer Verlag, pp. 181-198., 2013

Between 1979 and 1989, Air Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat was a premier recording ... more Between 1979 and 1989, Air Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat was a premier recording destination for a galaxy of Rock and Roll stars, including The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Buffet, Elton John, Dire Straits and The Police. Forced to close by Hurricane Hugo, the property has suffered further damage from the ongoing eruptions of the Soufrière Hills volcano over the past 15 years. Although the studio’s founder, Sir George Martin, maintains an active interest in its preservation and commemoration, access to Air Studios is now restricted because of its location within the dangerous exclusion zone. Nonetheless, it has become “a kinda sacred place” of pilgrimage (to quote one recent visitor), and is listed by the Montserrat Tourist Board as one of the island’s major claims to fame.

In 2010 and 2012 archaeologists from the Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project (SLAM) surveyed the ruins of Air Studios, carefully recording the spatial layout of the studio, documenting remnant material culture abandoned at the time of the studio’s closure, and excavating ash-covered pavement slabs, which had been inscribed by musicians during the studio’s heyday. Further research revealed that certain elements of the studios had been systematically stripped from the premises after 1989, and, in some cases, have since been reincorporated into other buildings across the island.

As a site of contemporary archaeology, Air Studios raises several theoretical considerations about the maintenance of ruins, experiences of a doomed place, and displacement of material objects. Why, for example, does Sir George Martin continue to spend money in maintaining the orderly appearance of a structure that is rapidly succumbing to tropical decay and will assuredly soon be overwhelmed by volcanic ash flows? Is a trip to Air Studios so evocative precisely because of its somewhat dangerous location and because a visit involves trespassing? Understanding this place requires consideration of the nostalgic sentiments and collective memories that draw people from around the world directly to Air Studios. We discuss these and other issues, including the sense in which Air Studios can be treated as an archaeological and heritage site, given its imminent demise.
"

Encyclopedia of Caribbean Archaeology, B. Reid and R.G. Gilmore III (eds), 2014

Journal of Field Archaeology, 37(4): 316-327, Nov 2012

The volcanically devastated landscape of Montserrat and its social fabric comprise what Maria Tum... more The volcanically devastated landscape of Montserrat and its social fabric comprise what Maria Tumarkin (2005) calls a ‘‘traumascape’’—a site of tragedy and catastrophe that is also a place of coping and resilience. How Montserratians engage with trauma is evident in how they remember their recent and
historical pasts, and in how they are reinventing aspects of their heritage in order to sustain a distinctly Montserratian identity for the future. Such a process of coping presents challenges for conducting archaeology in collaboration with the community. In this article, we describe the experiences of a recently
established project on the island (Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat) and discuss the
potential for, and the obstacles involved in, developing longer-term, sustainable forms of collaboration
between archaeologists and local Montserratian communities when facing the unusual circumstances of volcanic disaster and hazard.

This article describes what appears to be the first archaeological application of airborne LiDAR ... more This article describes what appears to be the first archaeological application of airborne LiDAR survey to historic-era landscapes in the Caribbean archipelago, on the island of Montserrat. LiDAR is proving invaluable in extending the reach of traditional pedestrian survey into less favorable areas, such as those covered by dense neotropical forest and by ashfall from the past two decades of active eruptions by the Soufrière Hills volcano, and to sites in localities that are inaccessible on account of volcanic dangers. Emphasis is placed on two aspects of the research: first, the importance of ongoing, real-time interaction between the LiDAR analyst and the archaeological team in the field; and second, the advantages of exploiting the full potential of the three-dimensional LiDAR point cloud data for purposes of the visualization of archaeological sites and features.

in Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture: Movements in Irish Landscapes. Edited by D.S. Nititham and R. Boyd, Ashgate: London, 2014

The Irish involvement in the Caribbean island of Montserrat, although short-lived, was complicate... more The Irish involvement in the Caribbean island of Montserrat, although short-lived, was complicated and adds nuance to our existing accounts of historic Irish diasporic experiences. Far from the mid-19th century Famine narrative that dominates many of our understandings of the forced and lowly migrant experience, the Irish were often beneficiaries of the reach of the British Empire and were happy to make their fortunes in far-off climes exploiting lands and African slaves...Our understandings of the perception of the Irish on contemporary Montserrat can be misled by media images of the "Black Irish" and their week-long celebrations of St. Patrick's Day. Yet careful reading of newspaper and tourism promotional materials over a period of several decades provides a different story, one that offers an unusually well documented modern-day instance of the "invention of tradition" (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983).

Congress Proceedings of the 24th (2011) International Association of Caribbean Archaeology, edited by Benoît Bérard, 2014

Historical Archaeology, 2023

For over five decades historical archaeologists conducting research in the United States have pro... more For over five decades historical archaeologists conducting research in the United States have produced important scholarship detailing how the material products and precedents of interactions among people from a multitude of cultural backgrounds created a distinctive plural American society. The American Experience in Archaeological Perspective (AEAP) book series was launched by the University Press of Florida in the early 2000s with the aim of focusing attention on the materiality of the United States as it is differentiated from other nation-states by circumstances of migration, race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and other socio-historical phenomena. A major goal of the series is to reveal how archaeology can interrogate formative aspects of American history and culture—events, institutions, places, practices, and processes—and evaluate their legacies with respect to the country’s present-day social and political circumstances. This essay reflects on the AEAP series and the scholarship produced by its authors over the past two decades. As examples drawn from more than two dozen volumes in the series illustrate, archaeological investigations of the detritus and landscapes associated with core American values and activities—in all their diversity—provide insights into the foundations of the American experience and what it means to be an American. These studies also provide broad comparisons with historical and anthropological inquiries into lifeways, identity, and national character throughout the world. We conclude with a discussion of the directions the series editors plan to take in publishing the next generation of scholarship in American historical archaeology.

Abstract: Generations of archaeologists have identified and examined craft production, specializa... more Abstract: Generations of archaeologists have identified and examined craft production, specialization, and technological development as defining characteristics of sociopolitical complexity. Yet, the significance of North American industries, especially ironworking, has ...

BAR INTERNATIONAL SERIES, Jan 1, 2007

Archaeologies, Jan 1, 2009

This volume is the product of the WAC-6 session, ''Experience, Modes of Engagement, Archaeology''... more This volume is the product of the WAC-6 session, ''Experience, Modes of Engagement, Archaeology'', which was part of the conference theme, ''Archaeological Theory? Legacies, Burdens, and Futures.'' The following contributions embrace emergent, analog, and paper-based media and move on from the worn observation that these media can be important tools towards active interventions that demonstrate how they affect practice and theory when employed critically and reflexively. This introduction orients the focus of the volume through a discussion and case study that place theoretical emphasis on experiences documented through multimedia. Important questions are raised throughout concerning: archaeology and digital representation, the creation and destruction of archaeological information, authenticity in representations, the construction of archaeologists' identities, and the non-linearity of archaeological practice. The studies in this volume approach archaeology through the lens of experience and multimedia engagement. In doing so they blend or altogether question the traditionally divided realms of theory and practice. Consequently, these contributions work with the interrelated agendas of the present between media ecologies and archaeology, and the changing pace and character of archaeology in the 21st century.

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2012

Recent literature hails George Marcus’ multi-sited ethnographic strategy as a potentially useful ... more Recent literature hails George Marcus’ multi-sited ethnographic strategy as a potentially useful approach for juxtaposing relations that transcend conventional spatiotemporal boundaries of archeological sites. Emerging from these discussions is what has been labeled multi-sited archeology, adapted from multi-sited ethnography to serve archeologists’ interests in comparing locales, multi-scalar connections, and local–global relations. Following a brief overview of multi-sited ethnographic principles, a review of the archeological literature exposes how archeologists are increasingly engaged with parts of multi-sited ethnography in practice, but in ways that remain, in our critical discussions, largely disengaged with the genealogy and idiosyncrasies of the approach’s foundational elements. Convergences and disjunctures between multi-sited strategies in ethnographic and in archeological practice are explored; these provide the basis for suggesting what might be a multi-sited archeology, illustrated here by a case study about the early New England iron industry. While multi-sited ethnography clearly cannot be a copy-and-paste application in archeology, its distinctiveness and usefulness in archeological comparisons is open to debate.

Historical Archaeology, 47(2): 16-44, 2013

In November 2010, 78% of Rhode Islanders elected not to eliminate the second half of the state’s ... more In November 2010, 78% of Rhode Islanders elected not to eliminate the second half of the state’s official name, “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations”. The debate over removing “Providence Plantations” suggests the selective historical memory of both civic leaders and citizens, who have forgotten the impacts and legacy of colonization in the 17th century. During the early settlement of Rhode Island, planting and plantations were explicit tools of European colonization involving many forms of oppression. Evidence from the 17th-century Old House site at Greene Farm, a former plantation in Warwick, Rhode Island, depicts a multi-cultural landscape and community increasingly dominated by the Greenes, an influential English family. An examination of changes in the documentary record, material culture, and lived environment related to Greene Farm between 1642 and 1711 maps the aggressive use of plantations by English settlers to permanently colonize a place and its original inhabitants, and considers how these acts of “planting” served to reinforce the development and maintenance of their New English identity.

Journal of Materials Science

Journal of Materials Science. Three brass sestertius coins from the reign of Gordian III were im... more Journal of Materials Science.
Three brass sestertius coins from the reign of Gordian III were imaged at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s neutron imaging beam, CG-1D, at the High Flux Isotope Reactor. Tomography results showed a gradual variation in neutron attenuation from one side of the coins to the other or toward the center of the coin. Linear neutron attenuation values calculated from the neutron radiographs, as well as micro-XRF results, suggest that this gradual variation in neutron attenuation is associated with elemental segregation within the coins. The difference in segregation patterns between the coins implies two types of casting methods were utilized to form the coins—vertical and horizontal casting methods.

Advances in Archaeological Practice:
A Journal of the Society for American Archaeology, 2014

Advances in Archaeological Practice, 2(2): 91-103, 2014

Neutron imaging is a nondestructive application capable of producing two- and three-dimensional m... more Neutron imaging is a nondestructive application capable of producing two- and three-dimensional maps of archaeological objects’ external and internal structure, properties, and composition. This report presents the recent development of neutron imaging data collection and processing methods at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which have been advanced, in part, by information gathered from the experimental imaging of 25 archaeological objects over the past three years. The dual objectives of these imaging experiments included (1) establishing the first methodological procedures for the neutron imaging of archaeomaterials involving the CG-1D beamline and (2) further illustrating the potential of neutron imaging for archaeologists to use in the reverse engineering of ancient and historical objects. Examples of objects imaged in two and three dimensions are provided to highlight the application’s strengths and limitations for archaeological investigations, especially those that address ancient and historic technologies, materials science, and conservation issues.

Physics Procedia, 43: 343-351 , May 2013

This article presents the initial results of 2-D and 3-D neutron imaging of bronze artifacts usin... more This article presents the initial results of 2-D and 3-D neutron imaging of bronze artifacts using the CG-1D prototype
beamline at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Neutron
imaging is a non-destructive technique capable of producing unprecedented three-dimensional information on
archaeomaterials, including qualitative, quantitative, and visual data on impurities, composition change, voids, and
structure at macro-scale levels. The initial results presented in this publication highlight how information from
neutron imaging can provide otherwise inaccessible details about the methods and materials that ancient craftspeople
used in creating bronze objects.

Making Senses of the Past: Toward a Sensory Archaeology (edited by Jo Day), Mar 2013

Making objects, whether by wrought or mechanized techniques, is, and was in the past, a multi-sen... more Making objects, whether by wrought or mechanized techniques, is, and was in the past, a multi-sensory affair, but a challenge exists as to how to identify and interpret these sensory acts of production in archaeological materials. Using examples from colonial period iron-production sites in New England, this discussion demonstrates how archaeological assemblages may be uniquely suited to address the social, material, and sensory complexities of craft production. Written documentation of metal (and other) production processes is often limited in its description of craft operations, which were largely guided by tactile engagements, sensory cues, and experience. Differential access to and command over these bodies of practice by those who participated in and observed iron manufacture resulted in concomitantly differential multisensory experiences and understandings of the production process. Three points of consideration-the cooperation of the senses, material properties, and performance-are raised here as the basis for questioning how archaeologists might use archaeological materials to access these practice-oriented elements of production. Using a suite of methods drawn from archaeology and materials science, the following examples demonstrate how technological tools allow archaeologists to read evidence of the sensory production process from metals-which act as documents that contain otherwise inaccessible information about the traditions of and engagements with craft technologies.

The World of Iron, 2013

The complex processes of craft technique and production involved in ironworking can be discerned ... more The complex processes of craft technique and production involved in ironworking can be discerned and
understood at multiple scales of archaeological visibility – from a single object’s internal microstructure to the broader social
networks within which iron objects were created and circulated. Seeing and interpreting these scales of visibility requires
opening the colonial ironworking industry’s black box of technological practices by accounting for material, social, and
theoretical relationships from archaeology and beyond. Beginning with microscopic details of iron objects, this discussion
builds from various scales of archaeological, historical, and metallurgical evidence to examine networks of innovation and
tradition across colonial ironworking sites in New England. In exploring the inseparable material and social components
of ironworking through a contextually-based, symmetrical enquiry, the heterogeneous nature of the colonial ironworking
process is underscored. The results present socio-material networks and theoretical questions that were heretofore invisible
historically and archaeologically.

Archaeological and …, Jan 1, 2011

This object-specific case study focuses on cupreous artifacts excavated from the Great Temple com... more This object-specific case study focuses on cupreous artifacts excavated from the Great Temple complex of Petra, Jordan to demonstrate how the use of compositional X-ray analyses alongside two experimental applications (ImageJ software and nanoindentation) have the potential to generate different and otherwise unobtainable information about archaeological metals. The study highlights the value of using multiple techniques as a means of resolving the ambiguities that tend to arise from interpretations of single-sited measurements on objects and from single-instrumental analyses during studies of production processes and consequent material performance. Employing different techniques on multiple localities within a sample permits the gathering of precise information about the behavior of and interrelationships between variables that affect the objects' fabrication and use, particularly composition, structure, and hardness properties. The resulting data are interpreted in association with contextual archaeological information from Petra to consider the use-life and potential significance of these objects.

Historical metallurgy, Jan 1, 2008

Hamtramck Spatial Archaeology Project, 2023

The Hamtramck Explorer is a digital deep map prototype created with support from the National End... more The Hamtramck Explorer is a digital deep map prototype created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Hamtramck Historic Spatial Archaeology Project is designed to work through the issues of representing, and rectifying, uncertainties in historical datasets by adapting existing digital data infrastructure methods to accommodate archaeological information.

Three "Dig Detroit" videos on excavation, technology, and women (click on title for access to the... more Three "Dig Detroit" videos on excavation, technology, and women (click on title for access to the you tube link)

The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2012

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