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Ryan Clasby

Profile picture for Ryan Clasby

Contact Information

NAGPRA
M/C 304
Champaign, IL 61820
Postdoctoral Research Associate, NAGPRA Office, Office of Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Research, UIUC

Biography

Ryan Clasby is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in Andean and Amazonian prehistory with a research interest in interregional interaction and exchange, complex societies, ritual and religion, human adaptations to tropical forest landscapes, and the importance of provincial museums in Latin America to cultural identity and scientific investigation. More specifically, his research is based in the eastern Andean tropical montane forest and is aimed at examining early interregional exchange networks between the Andes and the Amazon and the impact that these relationships had on long term cultural and sociopolitical developments within western South America. His research has been supported by an NSF as well as postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Dumbarton Oaks, American Council of Learned Societies), published in journals such as Latin American Antiquity, and is exemplified in his edited volume The Archaeology of the Upper Amazon. Complexity and Interaction in the Andean Tropical Forest which brought together scholars working in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador to demonstrate the complex cultural accomplishments of the upper Amazon’s indigenous people.

Research Interests

Theoretical: Complex societies; interregional interaction; ritual and religion; environmental archaeology; tropical forest archaeology; urbanism; ceramic analysis; lithic analysis; GIS; tropical forest archaeology and ethnography; museum anthropology, curation and collections management, cultural restitution

 

Regional: South America especially Peru; the Andes and Amazonia; Chavín culture; Inca

Education

2014 PhD, Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, CT

2009 MPhil, Anthropology, Yale University, New Haven, CT

2004 BA, Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign