Anthony Graesch

Anthony P. Graesch is an anthropologist whose scholarship and analytic sensibilities are shaped by archaeological method and theory. His active research programs address 1) household materiality and discard behavior in 21st century North America and 2) ancestral Sto:lo-Coast Salish households and lifeways in western British Columbia. Although seemingly disparate research domains, some common threads link these programs: a focus on discard as a set of deeply rooted dispositions that undergird routine household life and are imbricated with other domains of daily practice; a focus on materializations of labor in household assemblages; a pursuit of the less-glamorous, less-studied, and oft-dismissed realms of the material record; and a commitment to exploring the applications of archaeological research—the process and the outcomes—to addressing contemporary challenges.

As College Archaeologist, Professor Graesch collaborates with the Office of the Arboretum to steward the cultural resources encompassed in the College’s 750-acre campus. Collectively spanning over two thousand years of human entanglements with local landscapes and ecosystems, these important cultural resources include numerous archaeological sites and features.

Professor Graesch oversees the Archaeology Concentration in the Anthropology major and offers courses addressing the practice, theory, and ethics of archaeological anthropology. Some of these courses are designed around active, collaborative research programs; some address the study and stewardship of cultural resources in the College Arboretum. He regularly mentors students pursuing advanced field- and lab-based experiential education, and he subscribes to the idea that undergraduates should achieve demonstrable research literacy at the time of graduation. Professor Graesch’s efforts to challenge students to work harder than they thought possible and to reach unanticipated levels of academic achievement garnered him a Helen Mulvey Faculty Award.

Students pursuing Anthropology and/or the social science track of Environmental Studies as majors or minors can seek Professor Graesch as a faculty adviser. He also serves as a faculty fellow for the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment and the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology and advises students applying to and pursuing projects in both. In true liberal Arts fashion, many of Professor Graesch’s students pursue an Anthropology major in combination with a second major in Environmental Studies, Biology, or Art.

Research | Curriculum Vitae | Anthropology Department