Contemporary Archaeology and the City ― Creativity, Ruination, and Political Action

Contemporary Archaeology and the City foregrounds the archaeological study of post-industrial and other urban transformations through a diverse, international collection of case studies. Over the past decade contemporary archaeology has emerged as a dynamic force for dissecting and contextualizing the material complexities of present-day societies. Contemporary archaeology challenges conventional anthropological and archaeological conceptions of the past by pushing temporal boundaries closer to, if not into, the present.

The volume is organized around three themes that highlight the multifaceted character of urban transitions in present-day cities - creativity, ruination, and political action. The case studies offer comparative perspectives on transformative global urban processes in local contexts through research conducted in the struggling, post-industrial cities of Detroit, Belfast, Indianapolis, Berlin, Liverpool, Belem, and post-Apartheid Cape Town, as well as the thriving urban centres of Melbourne, New York City, London, Chicago, and Istanbul. Together, the volume contributions demonstrate how the contemporary city is an urban palimpsest comprised by archaeological assemblages - of the built environment, the surface, and buried sub-surface - that are traces of the various pasts entangled with one another in the present.

This volume aims to position the city as one of the most important and dynamic arenas for archaeological studies of the contemporary by presenting a range of theoretically-engaged case studies that highlight some of the major issues that the study of contemporary cities pose for archaeologists.

Laura McAtackney, Associate Professor in Sustainable Heritage Management, Aarhus University,Krysta Ryzewski, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Wayne State University

Laura McAtackney is Associate Professor in Sustainable Heritage Management in the Archaeology Department at Aarhus University, Denmark. An archaeologist by training, her current research uses contemporary and historical archaeological approaches, and its heritage implications, to explore areas as diverse as material segregation and borders, the dark heritage of Long Kesh / Maze prison and female experiences of political imprisonment during the Irish Civil War. She created and maintains a website on female experiences of imprisonment during the Irish Civil War. She is secretary of CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory group) and is a co-assistant editor of Post Medieval Archaeology.


Krysta Ryzewski is a historical archaeologist and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she co-leads the Anthropology of the City initiative. Her research explores the consequences of disruptive social and environmental pressures on past landscapes, communities, and material culture production. She currently conducts major research projects that focus on these relationships in urban North America (Detroit) and in the Caribbean (Montserrat). She also has a background in the materials science sub-field of engineering. Her research is funded by the NEH, NSF, National Geographic Society, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and other organizations. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Brown University and MPhil in Archaeology and Heritage Management from the University of Cambridge.