Anthropology professor receives President's Research Enhancement Award

Historical Archaeologist, Dr. Krysta Ryzewski, and colleagues in the Department of Anthropology awarded President's Research Enhancement in the Arts and Humanities for the "Unearthing Detroit: Re-assembling the City's cultural heritage through museum collections and community archaeology" project.

Detroit's popular history is firmly tied to the city's status as the global capital of the automotive industry. The story that's emerged is one of unprecedented industrial growth and decline accompanied by frequent, and occasionally tumultuous, socio-economic, political and environmental changes (Galster 2012; Sugrue 1998). Archaeology lends a different dimension, that of deep time and less familiar places, to reveal a complex palimpsest of urban life as it evolved over the last three centuries (Gilchrist 2005). The city's social and industrial histories have the potential to deepen and expand our interpretation of urban centers in the modern world. Detroit, in particular, hosted a diversity of communities before and after its automotive heyday, from long before the time of its founding by Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac in 1701 to the present (Pilling 1982). But Detroit's buried material culture and historical landscapes-potential reservoirs for a rich cultural narrative-contain stories that remain for the most part untold.

Over 250,000 archaeological artifacts from two-dozen locations in the city have been excavated from Detroit landscapes since the 1960s and are now housed in Wayne State's Gordon L. Grosscup Museum of Anthropology in Old Main. The material remains, their associated contexts, and the archival records and personal memories attached to them, offer an unparalleled opportunity to compile the first synthesis of Detroit's past from an historical and archaeological perspective. Equally important, the collections- and community-based research design proposed will produce multiple forms of information-publications, exhibits, and digital resources that will recognize and engage the histories and communities that have shaped Detroit's urban fabric and cultural heritage over time.

"Unearthing Detroit" is supported by funds from the Office of the Vice President for Research at Wayne State and is the first part of a long-term urban archaeology and cultural heritage research project at the University. Collections resources, faculty, students and community collaborators will be involved in the project. The initiative aims to locate and re-assemble the histories of Detroit's underrepresented communities, including past residents largely omitted from the city's dominant historical narratives. Unearthing Detroit will foreground working class groups, diaspora and immigrant populations, African- and Native-Americans, as well as present-day stakeholders (students, academics, urban pioneers, community groups, descendants and preservation agencies, among others). The work begins at Old Main this August, 2013 and will run through 2014.

For information contact: Dr. Krysta Ryzewski at Krysta.Ryzewski@wayne.edu