About Research
I am a Mesoamericanist archaeologist with topical interests in the economic and political organization of agrarian state societies. I have directed several fieldwork projects focused on Aztec society in the Mexican state of Morelos. These projects, funded by the National Science Foundation and other agencies, have used the methods of residential excavations to illuminate the nature of local society and its changes under the Aztec empire. This research has addressed a number of topics under the general rubric of archaeological political economy, including urbanism, peasant society, agricultural intensification, craft specialization, trade, and imperialism.
I have had a strong interest in ancient urbanism since my first taste of anthropology and archaeology as an undergraduate student of George Cowgill at Brandeis University. Researching Teotihuacan for my senior thesis cemented my interest in Mesoamerican archaeology as an intellectual and professional pursuit. After my dissertation research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Postclassic chronology in Morelos, my work has emphasized three broad themes: households and social structure; empires and world systems; and urbanism. My excavations of rural Aztec sites in the 1980s illuminate urban processes; I favor a functional approach to urbanism in which cities must be viewed within a regional framework. There are not many aspects of preindustrial cities or urbanism that can be adequately understood without taking the hinterlands into account. Work at Yautepec in the 1990s addressed urbanism more directly through excavations of elite and commoner residences in a major Aztec-period city-state capital.
My next fieldwork project will focus on excavations of residences and agricultural terraces at Calixtlahuaca, a Postclassic urban site in the Toluca Valley of central Mexico. This research will integrate two complementary archaeological approaches to complex societies: the social archaeology of houses, and the monumental archaeology of public architecture. My fieldwork addresses the former theme, and the latter was covered by earlier excavations (in the 1930s) of temples and public buildings at Calixtlahuaca.
My appreciation of the need to tie together the above two domains derives from a comprehensive approach to urbanism that I have developed in the course of teaching my earliest cities class. My approach has four components—urban form, urban life, urban functions, and urban meaning—that together provide a broad perspective on cities and urbanism. No single theory or approach is adequate to encompass the social complexity of urbanism; what is needed is a combination of models and theories on different levels. Among the constituent models I employ are a number of built-environment approaches; Amos Rapoport’s concept of levels of meaning in the built environment; a new model of urban planning (described in a paper under review); economic and functional models of households; regional economic systems approaches; world-systems approaches; and energetics models of construction and transport.
My interest in urbanism goes beyond Mesoamerica. I follow work on other ancient urban traditions, both for my ancient cites course and for my own research. I have also found it necessary to read beyond the literature of archaeology and anthropology. Although archaeologists regularly draw from fields like urban history, architectural history, environmental psychology, and urban planning, we have not devoted enough effort to placing our research within the larger universe of comparative urban studies. For this reason I have begun publishing in journals like the Journal of Urban History and the Journal of Planning History.
I am putting some of my data and ideas together in a book, Aztec City-State Capitals. This will be published by the University Press of Florida in a new book series, "Ancient Cities of the New World." This book series, edited by myself, Marilyn Masson and John Janusek, will publish case studies of major ancient urban centers in Mesoamerica and South America.
My immediate research plans include excavations at Calixtlahuaca; continuation of an analysis of Postclassic ceramics from the Toluca Valley, and the construction and installation of an archaeological lab/warehouse facility in Cuernavaca, Mexico. This facility, whose construction will be funded by the National Science Foundation, will house archaeological collections from Morelos from projects by David Grove, Kenneth Hirth, and me.
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About Teaching
Before coming to ASU, I taught a variety of courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels; most dealt with Mesoamerican prehistory, comparative early civilizations, and archaeological method and theory. My most popular undergraduate classes were a large lecture course (ca. 120 students) called "Aztecs, Incas and Mayas," and a smaller, mid-level course, "The Earliest Cities," a comparative look at early civilizations focusing on cities and urbanism. At the graduate level, my seminar "Archaeological Research Design" was successful in training students in scientific approaches to archaeology as well as teaching them to write grant proposals (a number of NSF dissertation grants developed from this seminar). I have taught the combined undergrad/grad "Seminar in Social Archaeology" on a number of topics, including houses and households, ancient cities, economic archaeology, and the built environment of early states. I approach each topic from four perspectives: social theory, comparative data (documentary and ethnographic), archaeological methods and theory, and archaeological data. I expect to continue these teaching interests at ASU.
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Select Publications
Smith, Michael E. (2000)
City and Environment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Smith, Michael E. (2000)
Aztec City-States. In A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures, edited by Mogens Herman Hansen, pp. 581-595. The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Copenhagen.
Smith, Michael E. (2002)
Domestic Ritual at Aztec Provincial Sites in Morelos. In Domestic Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by Patricia Plunket, pp. 93-114. Monograph, vol. 46. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA, Los Angeles.
Smith, Michael E. (2002)
The Earliest Cities. In Urban Life: Readings in Urban Anthropology, edited by George Gmelch, and Walter Zenner, pp. 3-19. 4th ed. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights, IL.
Smith, Michael E. (2003)
The Aztecs. 2nd ed. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
Smith, Michael E. (2003)
Comercio postclásico en la cerámica decorada: Malinalco, Toluca, Guerrero y Morelos. Arqueología (INAH) 29:63-84.
Smith, Michael E. (2003)
A Quarter-Century of Aztec Studies. Mexicon 25:1-10.
Smith, Michael E. (2004)
The Archaeology of Ancient State Economies. Annual Review of Anthropology 33:73-102.
Smith, Michael E. (2005)
City Size in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica. Journal of Urban History 31:403-434.
Smith, Michael E., and Frances F. Berdan (editors) (2003)
The Postclassic Mesoamerican World. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Smith, Michael E., and Marilyn A. Masson (editors) (2000)
The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica: A Reader. Blackwell, Oxford.
Smith, Michael E., and Lisa Montiel (2001)
The Archaeological Study of Empires and Imperialism in Prehispanic Central Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20:245-284.
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Curriculum Vitae:
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Contact:
Michael E. Smith
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Links
Michael Smith’s Web Page
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