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Monica L. Smith

Monica L. Smith

Professor, Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies

Office:

Fowler Bldg A351/A148

Phone: (310) 794-9179

Fax: (310) 206-4723

Email

CV

Personal Website

Class Website

Links:

Anthropology Home Page

Education

Ph.D., University of Michigan (1997)

Areas of Interest

Urbanism, economic networks, consumption and material culture, anthropology of food, comparative historical archaeology; South Asia, Mediterranean, Southwestern U.S.

Biography

Research on Cities Past and Present

Cities have become the predominant global mode of life, but their development over the past six thousand years has encompassed amazingly rapid social, economic, and even biological adjustments. My current fieldwork is focused on the Indian subcontinent, where excavations and survey have revealed the complexities of newly-emergent urban environments.  I describe myself as an ancient economic historian who utilizes archaeological data to analyze the collective effects of routine activities through the study of food, ordinary goods, and architecture.

The story of human “civilization” encompasses the actions of many thousands of ordinary individuals.  In the past as in the present, routine and repeated actions produced both monumental architecture and the signature of daily life recorded in humble objects such as pottery, textiles, and other portable goods.  Archaeologists evaluate material objects to understand social and economic configurations.  Even small fragments can reveal aspects such as manufacturing techniques (could the object have been made by anyone, or was a specialist involved who would have been paid?), usages (was the object very worn before discard, or was it relatively new indicating an expectation that it was easily replaceable?), and value (was the object reverently placed in a ritual context, or was it thrown out with the rest of the household garbage?).

But archaeology isn’t just about “old” things, and an archaeological perspective can help us understand our own modern configurations of material goods and spatial organization.  We can only hold a couple of objects at a time—so what do we do with the rest of our stuff?  In the choice of objects, it is not only money but, increasingly, time that is scarce such that we require a time budget for dealing with the physical world.  What do we choose to display and what is kept hidden?  What is the replacement rate of objects, and from where do we acquire the things that we use?  How and why do we select the foods that we eat, and how they are eaten? What are the relative meanings of a gift, a found object, an inheritance, or an item that we select ourselves?

Cities are places where human interactions with objects and spaces become particularly intense.  In cities, people have smaller and smaller private spaces as conditions become more crowded, but they also have access to a greater diversity of goods produced by specialists and available from markets, bazaars, and street vendors.  Factors such as style also accelerate consumption and production processes, such that cycles of discard are speeded up.  Archaeological excavations at ancient cities worldwide illustrate massive amounts of garbage, indicating that the development of a “disposable” culture isn’t simply a modern one but a phenomenon closely linked to the development of urbanism.

Publications

Awards

  • Emerald Literati Award for article published in Research in Economic Anthropology (2013)
  • Archaeological Dialogues Essay Award, Theoretical Archaeology Group conference (2008)
  • Visiting Research Associate, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe (2007-08)
  • Faculty Career Development Award, UCLA (2004)
  • UCIS Faculty Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh (2002)
  • Regents’ Fellowship, University of Michigan (1991-1994)
  • Phi Beta Kappa

Graduate Students

Steven Ammerman is a Ph.D. student examining the role of domestic and wild animals in ancient urban societies with a focus on the Early Historic period of the Indian subcontinent. His M.A. paper examined the theory and longitudinal history of human interactions with wild, domesticated, and feral animals.

Eden Franz is an anthropology graduate student investigating the role of foodways in the longitudinal development of social complexity, with a particular focus on Old World fauna.

Baisakhi Sengupta is a archaeology graduate student focused on the medieval period in northern India; her research interests include religion and ritual, gender studies/masculinity, urbanism, and regional surveys of historical sites.

Dr. Stephanie Salwen completed her dissertation in 2017 on the landscape effects and human-environmental dynamics of rivers in North America.

Dr. Kanika Kalra completed her dissertation in 2016 and is Assistant Professor in the Jyoti Dalal School of Liberal Arts at NMIMS in Mumbai, India.  Her dissertation was on the social and economic organization of water management in the early medieval period in India. Her M.A. paper examined the social and economic configuration of the medieval town of Harnol in northern India.

Dr. Elizabeth Baker Brite completed her dissertation in 2011 and is Clinical Assistant Professor and Director of Engaged Learning at Purdue University Honors College.  Her dissertation was based on her fieldwork in Uzbekistan at an early fortified settlement, examining the nature of social and economic continuities under conditions of political collapse. Her M.A. examined the political and economic context of wall painting at the site of Kazakhl’i-yatkan in Uzbekistan.

Dr. Elizabeth Mullane, now with the Offices of Medical Education at the University of North Carolina,  completed her dissertation in 2009 on the application of modeling (specifically, self-organizing systems) to archaeological cultures of variable complexity. Her M.A. evaluated the growth of trade and social interactions from the Iron Age through the Roman period in the Kahramanmarash Valley, Turkey.

Monica L. Smith

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