Dr. Fritz retires this year after 28 years with the Department of Anthropology
Gayle Fritz is a paleoethnobotanist with the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. She also has a courtesy appointment in the Department of Biology. Gayle joined the department in 1990 after completing her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Prehistoric Ozark Agriculture.
Gayle works with archaeobotanical remains to answer questions about how people interacted with plants so that they could eat and drink well, manage their landscapes, restore and maintain health, perform rituals, negotiate trade relationships, and enhance many other economic and social activities. Much of her research focuses on processes of plant domestication and sequences leading to the development of agricultural systems worldwide, but especially in the United States and Mexico. Her more recent research examines foodways resulting from interaction between Native Americans and European colonizers, specifically at the Berry site in western North Carolina as a member of the Exploring Joara archaeological project. For more on her research, visit her faculty page.
While at Washington University in St. Louis, Gayle has been a major advisor to numerous graduate students in their Ph.D. completion:
- Ksenija Borojevic (1997)
- Michele Williams (2000)
- Gina Powell (2001)
- KatherineRoberts (2005)
- Sarah Walshaw (2005)
- Karla Hansen-Speer (2006)
- Angela Gordon Glore (2006)
- Catrina Adams (2009)
- John Kevin Hanselka (2011)
- Robert Spengler (2013)
- Clarissa Cagnato (2015)
- BrieAnna Langlie (2016)
- Natalie Mueller (2017)
- Kelsey Nordine (current)
- Grace Ward (current)
The Department of Anthropology celebrated Gayle and her significant contributions to the university and anthropology community at her retirement party on April 24, 2018. Past and current students joined, as well as colleagues and friends from the Missouri Botanical Gardens.
