Ryan Clasby

Dr. Ryan Clasby — Senior Research Fellow

Director, Archaeology & Museology Initiatives, Neotropical Anthropology Laboratory (NAL)

Dr. Ryan Clasby is Senior Research Fellow at the Neotropical Anthropology Laboratory (NAL) and serves as Director of Archaeology & Museology Initiatives, where he provides strategic leadership at the intersection of archaeology, museum practice, Indigenous heritage, and public scholarship. He is also Curator for Global Indigenous Art and Lifeways at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas.

Dr. Clasby received his PhD and MPhil from Yale University and his BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Trained as an anthropological archaeologist with extensive museum and curatorial experience, his research focuses on the art and archaeology of the ancient and contemporary Amazon, with particular attention to material culture, interregional exchange, and the long durée of Indigenous creativity and sociopolitical transformation.

Since 2007, Dr. Clasby has conducted sustained archaeological investigations in the western Amazonian lowlands and eastern Andean montane forests of northern Peru, examining early exchange networks linking the Andes and Amazonia. His work elucidates how these interregional relationships shaped long-term cultural trajectories, political formations, and aesthetic traditions across western South America. This field-based research is distinguished by its integration of archaeological data, ethnohistorical interpretation, and material-culture analysis.

More recently, Dr. Clasby has become deeply engaged in the documentation, preservation, and ethical reactivation of archaeological and anthropological legacy collections from greater Amazonia. This work fits closely with NAL’s commitments to archival ethics, Indigenous data sovereignty, and collaborative knowledge production. His approach emphasizes improving access for source communities while also expanding research usability for scholars, museums, and educators.

At the Spencer Museum of Art, Dr. Clasby is currently planning a major exhibition on historical and contemporary Amazonian art traditions. The exhibition seeks to deconstruct Western imaginaries of the Amazon rainforest by foregrounding the region’s deep cultural histories and the lived realities of contemporary Amazonian life. Through Indigenous and mestizo art practices, the project illustrates how aesthetic traditions both reflect and respond to ecological change, political violence, extractivism, and global circulation. This curatorial work exemplifies Dr. Clasby’s ability to translate rigorous scholarship into compelling public-facing narratives.

As Director of Archaeology & Museology Initiatives at NAL, Dr. Clasby leads efforts to:

Integrate archaeological research with ethnographic and historical inquiry

Develop museum-based and digital platforms for Indigenous heritage collaboration

Advance ethical standards for legacy collections and exhibition practice

Support interdisciplinary training in archaeology, museology, and material culture studies

Bridge university research, museums, and Amazonian source communities

Dr. Clasby’s scholarship has been published by Latin American Antiquity, Oxford University Press, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, and Yale University Publications in Anthropology. He also co-edited, with Jason Nesbitt, the volume The Archaeology of the Upper Amazon: Complexity and Interaction in the Andean Tropical Forest (University Press of Florida), a foundational contribution to Amazonian archaeology.