about

Hola/hello! My name is Marie Elizabeth Grávalos, but most people call me Beth. My pronouns are she/her/ella. I’m a first generation academic and Mexican-American. Born and raised in the Midwest, I trace my roots to the US-Mexico border (El Paso/Chihuahua), Guadalajara, MX, and La Rioja, Spain. I hold a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University. I will join the faculty of Anthropology as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in September 2025.

I am an anthropological archaeologist that studies Indigenous Andean communities in the deep past, for whom we have no written records. I look at Andean ways of making things—like ceramics, textiles, and cordage—to understand the sociopolitics that undergirded these making practices, including engagements with specific substances and landscapes. With theoretical foci on materiality, ontology, and social practice, this research asks: what are the political affordances of specific materials? How did materials bridge possibilities for political action? How did people’s engagements with specific landscapes and materials impact power dynamics, economies, and social identities? To think through these questions, my work bridges humanities and science perspectives, blending insights from anthropological theory and cultural geography with material science techniques.

This work is based in the Ancash Region of northern Peru, where my ongoing investigation into political geologies considers how geologic resources are culturally made and valued, and how categorizations and use of these geomaterials foment political dynamics among pre-Hispanic and present-day Andean communities.

I am trained as both a field archaeologist and materials analysis specialist. Since 2009, I have participated in and directed research projects in Peru, the Bahamas, and the city of Chicago. I am committed to collaboration with descendant communities and center community-based methodologies in my research. I am also an expert in ceramic compositional analysis (LA-ICP-MS and thin section petrography) as well as textile analysis. Check out my publications to see what I have written about recently.