However, students who’ve attended some uncommonly small undergraduate programs (Marlboro, Goddard, College of the Atlantic), which lack many of the attributes described above, do appear to have disproportionately converted their experiences to graduate study in anthropology.
Anthropology is such a wide field that PhD production data is meaningless without proper context.
For one, there is no set notion of what an undergraduate program in anthropology entails. Some colleges have an umbrella anthropology major that includes courses in archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology. Other colleges separate their archaeology majors from anthropology majors, and the two can be entirely separate departments (e.g. Boston University). Some colleges have all of their linguistics courses within anthropology, while others have separate linguistics departments. At least one university even has a separate biological anthropology department.
For another, graduate studies in archaeology take place in a wide variety of disciplines. In addition to anthropology, students study archaeology in art history, classics, Near Eastern studies and other area studies, history, geography, and interdisciplinary archaeology programs. Similarly, biological anthropology can be studied in biology, ecology, anthropology, and zoology departments.
Goddard, Marlboro, and the College of the Atlantic are extraordinarily tiny colleges, and they have only two to four dozen faculty members to cover all of the disciplines they offer. Even one or two students going on to a PhD program in cultural anthropology could enormously skew statistics. According to WebCASPAR, since 2000 Marlboro, Goddard, and the College of the Atlantic have produced 2, 2, and 4 PhDs in anthropology apiece. In that same time frame, Bryn Mawr has produced 49 anthropology PhDs.
Can’t help with schools, but good luck with your chosen path! D did not discover archaeology as a passion until sophomore year - and is at a schools that doesn’t offer it as a major. So she’s having to work with what she has available for majors and supplement with field work. She may do a post-baccalaureate program to ensure she has all the prerequisites to get into a great grad school.
Field work is very important. This site: https://www.archaeological.org/fieldwork is where D has found the digs she’s worked the past few summers. She’s worked digs with lots of kids from big U’s such as Michigan, The Ohio State U, and UNC as well as international students. D has been fortunate to have received grants every summer from her school to cover the costs of her field work.
You need to start running net price calculators on the websites of the colleges you are considering. They are on the college websites. Don’t apply unless you can afford what the NPC shows.
The absolute data and related information you offered (#21) has changed my perspective, @Archaeologist .