Gerad Smith

Gerad Smith is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology & Geography at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His research bridges archaeology with traditional knowledge systems, focusing on ancestral Alaska Dene sites.

• Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks (2020)

His research interests include household and landscape archaeology, social complexity during the Holocene era, ethnogeography, and collaborative knowledge production between Indigenous and Western sciences. He authored The Gift of the Middle Tanana (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), documenting his methodology. Current projects explore ancestral Dene interactions with Glacial Lake Atna, early potlatch behaviors in central Alaska, and human adaptations during the Holocene Thermal Maximum. He also investigates geospatial visibility analysis of wolf behaviors and precontact human-landscape relationships in the Yukon-Tanana Uplands.