Michael E Smith | Arizona State University (original) (raw)
Recent Papers by Michael E Smith
Zocalo / Publis Square, 2024
Link: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/move-climate-threatened-cities-managed-retreat/
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2024
We describe an analysis of the flaked stone tools recovered from households in the Postclassic ce... more We describe an analysis of the flaked stone tools recovered from households in the Postclassic central Mexican city of Calixtlahuaca (A.D. 1130-1530). Most artifacts are obsidian and represent the blade-core technology, but biface and bipolar artifacts are also represented. Even though household residents were involved in limited biface and bipolar reduction, it appears that the city did not have any resident blade producers. This finding is at odds with the views of many archaeologists, who tend to associate craft production with the emergence of complex Mesoamerican urban centers. We examine the technologies from temporally distinct Calixtlahuacan household assemblages. We discuss why the quantity and quality artifacts associated with blade production are not consistent with resident blade making in the city. Finally, we examine four models for blade provisioning: (1) whole-blade trade, (2) processed-blade trade, (3) long-distance itinerant craftsmen, and (4) local, hinterlandbased craftsmen. Evaluating how the Calixtlahuacans got their flaked stone tools has important implications for the comparative understanding of the organization and scale of economic provisioning systems in Postclassic central Mexico. This analysis supports new inferences about the nature of commercial networks that supplied the Toluca Valley prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century.
Discourse and Argumentation in Archaeology: Conceptual and Computational Approaches, 2023
This chapter reviews epistemological and methodological issues of argumentation in archaeology. I... more This chapter reviews epistemological and methodological issues of argumentation in archaeology. It begins with historical reasons for the lack of attention to argumentation in recent decades. Next, it reviews the status of archaeological argumentation as set out in a 2015 paper (Smith ME, SAA Archaeol Record 15:18-23, 2015b). This is followed by an expansion of this line of thought based on a methodological approach initiated by Stephen Toulmin in 1958. Toulmin's scheme is based on visual diagrams to show the sequential steps in an argument. It is a particularly helpful method to show the difference between strong and weak archaeological arguments about the past. I examine four archaeological arguments, and use Toulmin's method to assess their strength. The final topic is an examination of archaeological modeling as a form of argument.
Urban Clilmate, 2023
We describe a new research perspective on the relationship between climate change and heritage si... more We describe a new research perspective on the relationship between climate change and heritage sites around the world. Existing efforts focus mainly on either the climate-related damages to cultural heritage resources, or the role of local and indigenous communities in using and pre-serving heritage sites. We argue that heritage sites also provide an empirical record of past successes and failures in the ways that cities and settlements have responded to environmental shocks and stresses. The scientific analysis of the relevant archaeological remains can generate
hypotheses on the range of factors that facilitated or hindered resilience and influenced successful and unsuccessful urban adaptations. This knowledge, in turn, may help illuminate the drivers of urban adaptations to climate change today. The consideration of heritage sites as sources of in- sights for urban science and urban climate science adds a new dimension to the nexus of climate change research and heritage sites; it does not substitute for existing approaches.
Global Sustainability, 2023
I explore the different ways historical and archaeological data can be deployed to contribute to ... more I explore the different ways historical and archaeological data can be
deployed to contribute to research on urban sustainability science,
emphasizing issues of argumentation and epistemology. I organize the discussion around three types of argument. The urban trajectory argument exploits the long time series of early cities and urban regions to examine change at a long time scale. The sample size argument views the role of early cities as adding to the known sample of settlements to increase understanding of urban similarities and differences. The laboratory argument uses data from past cities to explicitly test models derived from contemporary cities. Each argument is examined for three contrasting epistemological approaches: heuristic analogs, case studies, and quantitative studies. These approaches form a continuum leading from lesser to greater scientific rigor and from qualitative to quantitative frameworks. Much past-to-present argumentation requires inductive logic, also called reasoning by analogy. Sustainability scientists have confused this general form of argument with its weakest version, known as heuristic analogs. I stress ways to improve methods of argumentation, particularly by moving research along the continuum from weaker to stronger arguments.
Open Archaeology, 2023
One of archaeology’s principal contributions to knowledge is its ability to track human actions a... more One of archaeology’s principal contributions to knowledge is its ability to track human actions and social conditions over long periods of time. I describe an approach to operationalizing this insight for the rise and fall of cities and other settlement over time. Cities that survive and thrive are considered successful, and urban success can be measured along three dimensions: persistence, population, and prosperity. Successful cities were those whose leaders, residents, and institutions found ways to adapt to a range of shocks and conditions, including the environment, local institutions, and regional political and economic forces. Urban success is therefore due to processes of urban adaptation that operated over long
periods of time. I outline a conceptual and methodological approach to urban success and position the concept with respect to notions of adaptation and time scales in sustainability science and the social and
historical sciences more broadly.
Keywords: cities,
Current Anthropology, 2022
One of the most common tendencies of human settlements is for larger settlements to display highe... more One of the most common tendencies of human settlements is for larger settlements to display higher population densities. Work in urban science and archaeology suggests that this densification pattern reflects an emergent spatial equilibrium where individuals balance movement costs with social interaction benefits, leading to increases in aggregate productivity and social interdependence. The temporary camps created by hunters and gatherers exhibit a tendency to become less dense with their population size. The different manner in which hunter-gatherer groups express their sociality in residential space suggests that they typically lack the social structures and material technologies necessary for humans to live at greater spatial densities in permanent settlements. Here we examine why this difference occurs and consider conditions under which hunter-gatherer groups may transition to sedentism and densification. We investigate the relationship between population and area in hunter-gatherer camps using a data set representing a large cross-cultural sample derived from the ethnographic literature. We present a model based on the interplay between social interactions and scalar stress that describes the observed patterns among mobile hunter-gatherers. We find that the transition to a densification scheme does not necessary involve domestic food production, only surpluses and storable resources.
Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2022
I discuss two categories of settlement that resemble cities in limited ways. Voluntary camps are ... more I discuss two categories of settlement
that resemble cities in limited ways. Voluntary
camps are places away from settlements where people
gather for short periods. They are dense settings
of intense social activity and communitas that teach
us about urban-related social processes of gathering
at high densities. Practical machine sites is Kevin
Lynch's term for regimented settlements established
by a dominant institution for a specific practical
purpose. These teach us about the roles of central
planning and control and their relationship with the
social dynamics oflonger-term occupation. A fuller,
comparative understanding of these various anomalous
urban settlements can help us develop better
explanations of settlements and urban dynamics in
the past and the present.
Cliodynamics, 2022
Sloppy argumentation occurs throughout The Dawn of Everything, making this a highly frustrating b... more Sloppy argumentation occurs throughout The Dawn of Everything, making this a highly frustrating book whose interpretations are poorly supported and sometimes in error. I focus on the treatment of early cities and urbanism in the book. While the treatment of the Ukrainian Trypillian sites, Teotihuacan, and other early settlements is adequate, the authors' claims for originality are overblown. Their failure to follow basic scholarly mechanics of documentation and argumentation (e.g., inappropriate use of argument by analogy; failure to cite relevant work; empty citations; and phrasing widely accepted conclusions as if they were radical new ideas) gets in the way of potential contributions to the study of early urbanism.
Slate, 2021
Aztec Tenochtitlan began as a damp town in the middle of a swamp, but it managed to thrive across... more Aztec Tenochtitlan began as a damp town in the middle of a swamp, but it managed to thrive across conquests, epidemics, droughts and floods to become one of the largest cities in the world today-Mexico City. When taking students to see the Aztec ruins next to the Zocalo, I used to wonder how places like Tenochtitlan, Beijing, or Rome (the "eternal city") managed to thrive for centuries, while other cities failed.
Anales de Antropologia, 2021
Los datos arqueobotánicos contribuyen aún poco a las reconstrucciones de la subsistencia y los p... more Los datos arqueobotánicos contribuyen aún poco a las reconstrucciones
de la subsistencia y los paisajes agrarios aztecas. En este artículo
analizamos un conjunto de macrorrestos carbonizados de plantas
recuperado en la capital posclásica del Valle de Toluca. Consideramos
los procesos de formación propios del sitio y en particular las vías de
carbonización de los restos vegetales que permitieron su conservación.
Destaca la quema de casas de bajareque, la que en dos casos consumió
cantidades importantes de víveres almacenados. Proponemos
un primer esbozo de la subsistencia de los habitantes del sitio y del
paisaje de laderas terraceadas en las que se distribuían sus viviendas y
terrenos de cultivo. Atribuimos un papel esencial a los llamados seudo-
cereales, incluidos la chía y una especie de quenopodio, posiblemente
cultivado por su grano.
Ingles:
Archaeobotanical data have so far contributed little to reconstructions
of Aztec subsistence and cultivated landscapes. In this article
we analyze an assemblage of charred plant macroremains from the
Postclassic capital of the Toluca Valley. We consider the formation
processes specific to the site and in particular the different pathways
that led to the charring of plant tissue and thus its preservation. The
burning of wattle-and-daub houses was singularly important and in
two cases the fire charred substantial amounts of stored food. We
attempt to characterize the subsistence of the inhabitants of the site
and the landscape of the terraced slopes where they built their houses
and farmed their fields. We attribute an esssential role to the so-called
pseudo-cereals, including chia and a species of chenopod possibly cultivated
for its grain.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
We propose a dedicated research effort on the determinants of settlement persistence in the ancie... more We propose a dedicated research effort on the determinants of settlement persistence in the ancient world, with the potential to significantly advance the scientific understanding of urban sustainability today. Settlements (cities, towns, villages) are locations with two key attributes: They frame human interactions and activities in space, and they are where people dwell or live. Sustainability, in this case, focuses on the capacity of structures and functions of a settlement system (geography, demography, institutions) to provide for continuity of safe habitation. The 7,000-y-old experience of urbanism, as revealed by archaeology and history, includes many instances of settlements and settlement systems enduring, adapting to, or generating environmental, institutional, and technological changes. The field of urban sustainability lacks a firm scientific foundation for understanding the long durée, relying instead on narratives of collapse informed by limited case studies. We argue for the development of a new interdisciplinary research effort to establish scientific understanding of settlement and settlement system persistence. Such an effort would build upon the many fields that study human settlements to develop new theories and databases from the extensive documentation of ancient and premodern urban systems. A scientific foundation will generate novel insights to advance the field of urban sustainability. urbanism | cities | sustainability | persistence | archaeology
Latin American Antiquity, 2021
The peoples of southern Mesoamerica, including the Classic period Maya, are often claimed to exhi... more The peoples of southern Mesoamerica, including the Classic period Maya, are often claimed to exhibit a distinct type of spatial organization relative to contemporary urban systems. Here, we use the settlement scaling framework and properties of settlements recorded in systematic, full-coverage surveys to examine ways in which southern Mesoamerican settlement systems were both similar to and different from contemporary systems. We find that the population-area relationship in these settlements differs greatly from that reported for other agrarian settlement systems, but that more typical patterns emerge when one considers a site epicenter as the relevant social interaction area, and the population administered from a given center as the relevant interacting population. Our results imply that southern Mesoamerican populations mixed socially at a slower temporal rhythm than is typical of contemporary systems. Residential locations reflected the need to balance energetic and transport costs of farming with lower-frequency costs of commuting to central places. Nevertheless, increasing returns in activities such as civic construction were still realized through lower-frequency social mixing. These findings suggest that the primary difference between low-density urbanism and contemporary urban systems lies in the spatial and temporal rhythms of social mixing.
Antiquity, 2021
Archaeologists are increasingly publishing articles proclaiming the relevance of our field for co... more Archaeologists are increasingly publishing articles proclaiming the relevance of our field for contemporary global challenges, yet our research has little impact on other disciplines or on policy-making. Here, the author discusses three reasons for this impasse in relevance: archaeologists do not understand how relevance is constructed between fields; too little of our work follows a rigorous scientific epistemology; and we are confused about the target audiences for our messages concerning our discipline's relevance. The author suggests two strategies for moving forward: transdisciplinary collaborative research and the production of quantitative scientific results that will be useful to scientists in disciplines more closely involved in today's global challenges.
Urban Studies, 2020
A general explanatory framework for the social processes underpinning urbanisation should account... more A general explanatory framework for the social processes underpinning urbanisation should account for empirical regularities that are shared among contemporary urban systems and ancient settlement systems known throughout archaeology and history. The identification of such shared properties has been facilitated by research traditions in each field that define cities and settlements as areas that capture networks of social interaction embedded in space. Using Settlement Scaling Theory (SST)-a set of hypotheses and mathematical relationships that together generate predictions for how measurable quantitative attributes of settlements are related to their population size-we show that aggregate properties of ancient settlement systems and contemporary metropolitan systems scale up in similar ways across time, geography and culture. Settlement scaling theory thus provides a unified framework for understanding and predicting these regularities across time and space, and for identifying putative processes common to all human settlements.
If you want to contact me, please use email, NOT the message feature of Academia.edu.
Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2020
Comparative analysis is an important goal of the research carried out by the Centre for Urban Net... more Comparative analysis is an important goal of the research carried out by the Centre for Urban Networks Evolution. Archaeo logists and historians conducting research on cities need comparison for several reasons: to distinguish unique features of individual cities from universal urban traits; to better understand individual cities and deposits; and to generalize about cities, towns, and urbanism. In this article, I review methods and concepts of comparative urban analysis, including systematic vs intensive comparisons, the scale of comparison, synchronic vs diachronic comparison, and comparison at different stages in a research trajectory. I also discuss empirical and epistemo logical linkages between comparisons of cities and comparisons of urban deposits as studied by high-definition archaeo logical methods. These issues of comparison can help integrate the analysis of urban networks with high-definition localized studies of urban deposits.
Journal of Anthropological Research, 2021
Charles Tilly proposed a model of durable social inequality that is potentially applicable to a w... more Charles Tilly proposed a model of durable social inequality that is potentially applicable to a wide range of societies. I demonstrate this potential by examining his causal mechanisms of inequality-exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation-as they apply to Aztec society immediately prior to the Spanish conquest of 1521. Tilly's model helps resolve key issues in the analysis of Aztec inequality and class structure. This application exemplifies the utility of Tilly's model in explaining social inequality in Aztec society and in unraveling causal relationships characteristic of ancient complex societies generally.
Open Archaeology, 2021
We carried out a full-coverage survey of the Yautepec Valley in the 1990s to reconstruct demograp... more We carried out a full-coverage survey of the Yautepec Valley in the 1990s to reconstruct demography and settlements and their changes through time. We investigated the extent to which well-documented developments in the adjacent Basin of Mexico were paralleled in Yautepec, as well as the impact of regional empires and economies on local society. Our analyses focused on Teotihuacan relations in the Classic period and relations with the Aztec empire and the Mesoamerican world system in the Middle and Late Postclassic periods. In addition to locating, mapping, and describing sites and taking grab-bag artifact collections, we also made a series of systematic intensive surface collections (5 × 5 m) and test excavations at samples of Classic and Postclassic sites. In this paper, we describe the survey and changing settlement patterns in the Yautepec Valley. We also present several analyses of changing patterns of urbanization through the Prehispanic era. We conclude with a synthesis of changing social and cultural dynamics in this region.
Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 2020
Urban agglomeration economies make cities central to theories of modern economic growth. There is... more Urban agglomeration economies make cities central to theories of modern economic growth. There is historical evidence for the presence of Smithian growth and agglomeration effects in English towns c.1450-1670, but seminal assessments deny the presence of agglomeration effects and productivity gains to Early Modern English towns. This study evaluates the presence of increasing returns to scale (IRS) in aggregate urban economic outputs-the empirical signature of feedbacks between Smithian growth and agglomeration effects-among the towns of 16th century England. To do so, we test a model from settlement scaling theory against the 1524/5 Lay Subsidy returns. Analysis of these data indicates that Tudor towns exhibited IRS-a finding that is robust to alternative interpretations of the data. IRS holds even for the smallest towns in our sample, suggesting the absence of town size thresholds for the emergence of agglomeration effects. Spatial patterning of scaling residuals further suggests regional demand-side interactions with Smithian-agglomeration feedbacks. These findings suggest the presence of agglomeration effects and Smithian growth in pre-industrial English towns. This begs us to reconsider the economic performance of Early Modern English towns, and suggests that the qualitative economic dynamics of contemporary cities may be applicable to premodern settlements in general.
Zocalo / Publis Square, 2024
Link: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/move-climate-threatened-cities-managed-retreat/
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2024
We describe an analysis of the flaked stone tools recovered from households in the Postclassic ce... more We describe an analysis of the flaked stone tools recovered from households in the Postclassic central Mexican city of Calixtlahuaca (A.D. 1130-1530). Most artifacts are obsidian and represent the blade-core technology, but biface and bipolar artifacts are also represented. Even though household residents were involved in limited biface and bipolar reduction, it appears that the city did not have any resident blade producers. This finding is at odds with the views of many archaeologists, who tend to associate craft production with the emergence of complex Mesoamerican urban centers. We examine the technologies from temporally distinct Calixtlahuacan household assemblages. We discuss why the quantity and quality artifacts associated with blade production are not consistent with resident blade making in the city. Finally, we examine four models for blade provisioning: (1) whole-blade trade, (2) processed-blade trade, (3) long-distance itinerant craftsmen, and (4) local, hinterlandbased craftsmen. Evaluating how the Calixtlahuacans got their flaked stone tools has important implications for the comparative understanding of the organization and scale of economic provisioning systems in Postclassic central Mexico. This analysis supports new inferences about the nature of commercial networks that supplied the Toluca Valley prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century.
Discourse and Argumentation in Archaeology: Conceptual and Computational Approaches, 2023
This chapter reviews epistemological and methodological issues of argumentation in archaeology. I... more This chapter reviews epistemological and methodological issues of argumentation in archaeology. It begins with historical reasons for the lack of attention to argumentation in recent decades. Next, it reviews the status of archaeological argumentation as set out in a 2015 paper (Smith ME, SAA Archaeol Record 15:18-23, 2015b). This is followed by an expansion of this line of thought based on a methodological approach initiated by Stephen Toulmin in 1958. Toulmin's scheme is based on visual diagrams to show the sequential steps in an argument. It is a particularly helpful method to show the difference between strong and weak archaeological arguments about the past. I examine four archaeological arguments, and use Toulmin's method to assess their strength. The final topic is an examination of archaeological modeling as a form of argument.
Urban Clilmate, 2023
We describe a new research perspective on the relationship between climate change and heritage si... more We describe a new research perspective on the relationship between climate change and heritage sites around the world. Existing efforts focus mainly on either the climate-related damages to cultural heritage resources, or the role of local and indigenous communities in using and pre-serving heritage sites. We argue that heritage sites also provide an empirical record of past successes and failures in the ways that cities and settlements have responded to environmental shocks and stresses. The scientific analysis of the relevant archaeological remains can generate
hypotheses on the range of factors that facilitated or hindered resilience and influenced successful and unsuccessful urban adaptations. This knowledge, in turn, may help illuminate the drivers of urban adaptations to climate change today. The consideration of heritage sites as sources of in- sights for urban science and urban climate science adds a new dimension to the nexus of climate change research and heritage sites; it does not substitute for existing approaches.
Global Sustainability, 2023
I explore the different ways historical and archaeological data can be deployed to contribute to ... more I explore the different ways historical and archaeological data can be
deployed to contribute to research on urban sustainability science,
emphasizing issues of argumentation and epistemology. I organize the discussion around three types of argument. The urban trajectory argument exploits the long time series of early cities and urban regions to examine change at a long time scale. The sample size argument views the role of early cities as adding to the known sample of settlements to increase understanding of urban similarities and differences. The laboratory argument uses data from past cities to explicitly test models derived from contemporary cities. Each argument is examined for three contrasting epistemological approaches: heuristic analogs, case studies, and quantitative studies. These approaches form a continuum leading from lesser to greater scientific rigor and from qualitative to quantitative frameworks. Much past-to-present argumentation requires inductive logic, also called reasoning by analogy. Sustainability scientists have confused this general form of argument with its weakest version, known as heuristic analogs. I stress ways to improve methods of argumentation, particularly by moving research along the continuum from weaker to stronger arguments.
Open Archaeology, 2023
One of archaeology’s principal contributions to knowledge is its ability to track human actions a... more One of archaeology’s principal contributions to knowledge is its ability to track human actions and social conditions over long periods of time. I describe an approach to operationalizing this insight for the rise and fall of cities and other settlement over time. Cities that survive and thrive are considered successful, and urban success can be measured along three dimensions: persistence, population, and prosperity. Successful cities were those whose leaders, residents, and institutions found ways to adapt to a range of shocks and conditions, including the environment, local institutions, and regional political and economic forces. Urban success is therefore due to processes of urban adaptation that operated over long
periods of time. I outline a conceptual and methodological approach to urban success and position the concept with respect to notions of adaptation and time scales in sustainability science and the social and
historical sciences more broadly.
Keywords: cities,
Current Anthropology, 2022
One of the most common tendencies of human settlements is for larger settlements to display highe... more One of the most common tendencies of human settlements is for larger settlements to display higher population densities. Work in urban science and archaeology suggests that this densification pattern reflects an emergent spatial equilibrium where individuals balance movement costs with social interaction benefits, leading to increases in aggregate productivity and social interdependence. The temporary camps created by hunters and gatherers exhibit a tendency to become less dense with their population size. The different manner in which hunter-gatherer groups express their sociality in residential space suggests that they typically lack the social structures and material technologies necessary for humans to live at greater spatial densities in permanent settlements. Here we examine why this difference occurs and consider conditions under which hunter-gatherer groups may transition to sedentism and densification. We investigate the relationship between population and area in hunter-gatherer camps using a data set representing a large cross-cultural sample derived from the ethnographic literature. We present a model based on the interplay between social interactions and scalar stress that describes the observed patterns among mobile hunter-gatherers. We find that the transition to a densification scheme does not necessary involve domestic food production, only surpluses and storable resources.
Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2022
I discuss two categories of settlement that resemble cities in limited ways. Voluntary camps are ... more I discuss two categories of settlement
that resemble cities in limited ways. Voluntary
camps are places away from settlements where people
gather for short periods. They are dense settings
of intense social activity and communitas that teach
us about urban-related social processes of gathering
at high densities. Practical machine sites is Kevin
Lynch's term for regimented settlements established
by a dominant institution for a specific practical
purpose. These teach us about the roles of central
planning and control and their relationship with the
social dynamics oflonger-term occupation. A fuller,
comparative understanding of these various anomalous
urban settlements can help us develop better
explanations of settlements and urban dynamics in
the past and the present.
Cliodynamics, 2022
Sloppy argumentation occurs throughout The Dawn of Everything, making this a highly frustrating b... more Sloppy argumentation occurs throughout The Dawn of Everything, making this a highly frustrating book whose interpretations are poorly supported and sometimes in error. I focus on the treatment of early cities and urbanism in the book. While the treatment of the Ukrainian Trypillian sites, Teotihuacan, and other early settlements is adequate, the authors' claims for originality are overblown. Their failure to follow basic scholarly mechanics of documentation and argumentation (e.g., inappropriate use of argument by analogy; failure to cite relevant work; empty citations; and phrasing widely accepted conclusions as if they were radical new ideas) gets in the way of potential contributions to the study of early urbanism.
Slate, 2021
Aztec Tenochtitlan began as a damp town in the middle of a swamp, but it managed to thrive across... more Aztec Tenochtitlan began as a damp town in the middle of a swamp, but it managed to thrive across conquests, epidemics, droughts and floods to become one of the largest cities in the world today-Mexico City. When taking students to see the Aztec ruins next to the Zocalo, I used to wonder how places like Tenochtitlan, Beijing, or Rome (the "eternal city") managed to thrive for centuries, while other cities failed.
Anales de Antropologia, 2021
Los datos arqueobotánicos contribuyen aún poco a las reconstrucciones de la subsistencia y los p... more Los datos arqueobotánicos contribuyen aún poco a las reconstrucciones
de la subsistencia y los paisajes agrarios aztecas. En este artículo
analizamos un conjunto de macrorrestos carbonizados de plantas
recuperado en la capital posclásica del Valle de Toluca. Consideramos
los procesos de formación propios del sitio y en particular las vías de
carbonización de los restos vegetales que permitieron su conservación.
Destaca la quema de casas de bajareque, la que en dos casos consumió
cantidades importantes de víveres almacenados. Proponemos
un primer esbozo de la subsistencia de los habitantes del sitio y del
paisaje de laderas terraceadas en las que se distribuían sus viviendas y
terrenos de cultivo. Atribuimos un papel esencial a los llamados seudo-
cereales, incluidos la chía y una especie de quenopodio, posiblemente
cultivado por su grano.
Ingles:
Archaeobotanical data have so far contributed little to reconstructions
of Aztec subsistence and cultivated landscapes. In this article
we analyze an assemblage of charred plant macroremains from the
Postclassic capital of the Toluca Valley. We consider the formation
processes specific to the site and in particular the different pathways
that led to the charring of plant tissue and thus its preservation. The
burning of wattle-and-daub houses was singularly important and in
two cases the fire charred substantial amounts of stored food. We
attempt to characterize the subsistence of the inhabitants of the site
and the landscape of the terraced slopes where they built their houses
and farmed their fields. We attribute an esssential role to the so-called
pseudo-cereals, including chia and a species of chenopod possibly cultivated
for its grain.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
We propose a dedicated research effort on the determinants of settlement persistence in the ancie... more We propose a dedicated research effort on the determinants of settlement persistence in the ancient world, with the potential to significantly advance the scientific understanding of urban sustainability today. Settlements (cities, towns, villages) are locations with two key attributes: They frame human interactions and activities in space, and they are where people dwell or live. Sustainability, in this case, focuses on the capacity of structures and functions of a settlement system (geography, demography, institutions) to provide for continuity of safe habitation. The 7,000-y-old experience of urbanism, as revealed by archaeology and history, includes many instances of settlements and settlement systems enduring, adapting to, or generating environmental, institutional, and technological changes. The field of urban sustainability lacks a firm scientific foundation for understanding the long durée, relying instead on narratives of collapse informed by limited case studies. We argue for the development of a new interdisciplinary research effort to establish scientific understanding of settlement and settlement system persistence. Such an effort would build upon the many fields that study human settlements to develop new theories and databases from the extensive documentation of ancient and premodern urban systems. A scientific foundation will generate novel insights to advance the field of urban sustainability. urbanism | cities | sustainability | persistence | archaeology
Latin American Antiquity, 2021
The peoples of southern Mesoamerica, including the Classic period Maya, are often claimed to exhi... more The peoples of southern Mesoamerica, including the Classic period Maya, are often claimed to exhibit a distinct type of spatial organization relative to contemporary urban systems. Here, we use the settlement scaling framework and properties of settlements recorded in systematic, full-coverage surveys to examine ways in which southern Mesoamerican settlement systems were both similar to and different from contemporary systems. We find that the population-area relationship in these settlements differs greatly from that reported for other agrarian settlement systems, but that more typical patterns emerge when one considers a site epicenter as the relevant social interaction area, and the population administered from a given center as the relevant interacting population. Our results imply that southern Mesoamerican populations mixed socially at a slower temporal rhythm than is typical of contemporary systems. Residential locations reflected the need to balance energetic and transport costs of farming with lower-frequency costs of commuting to central places. Nevertheless, increasing returns in activities such as civic construction were still realized through lower-frequency social mixing. These findings suggest that the primary difference between low-density urbanism and contemporary urban systems lies in the spatial and temporal rhythms of social mixing.
Antiquity, 2021
Archaeologists are increasingly publishing articles proclaiming the relevance of our field for co... more Archaeologists are increasingly publishing articles proclaiming the relevance of our field for contemporary global challenges, yet our research has little impact on other disciplines or on policy-making. Here, the author discusses three reasons for this impasse in relevance: archaeologists do not understand how relevance is constructed between fields; too little of our work follows a rigorous scientific epistemology; and we are confused about the target audiences for our messages concerning our discipline's relevance. The author suggests two strategies for moving forward: transdisciplinary collaborative research and the production of quantitative scientific results that will be useful to scientists in disciplines more closely involved in today's global challenges.
Urban Studies, 2020
A general explanatory framework for the social processes underpinning urbanisation should account... more A general explanatory framework for the social processes underpinning urbanisation should account for empirical regularities that are shared among contemporary urban systems and ancient settlement systems known throughout archaeology and history. The identification of such shared properties has been facilitated by research traditions in each field that define cities and settlements as areas that capture networks of social interaction embedded in space. Using Settlement Scaling Theory (SST)-a set of hypotheses and mathematical relationships that together generate predictions for how measurable quantitative attributes of settlements are related to their population size-we show that aggregate properties of ancient settlement systems and contemporary metropolitan systems scale up in similar ways across time, geography and culture. Settlement scaling theory thus provides a unified framework for understanding and predicting these regularities across time and space, and for identifying putative processes common to all human settlements.
If you want to contact me, please use email, NOT the message feature of Academia.edu.
Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2020
Comparative analysis is an important goal of the research carried out by the Centre for Urban Net... more Comparative analysis is an important goal of the research carried out by the Centre for Urban Networks Evolution. Archaeo logists and historians conducting research on cities need comparison for several reasons: to distinguish unique features of individual cities from universal urban traits; to better understand individual cities and deposits; and to generalize about cities, towns, and urbanism. In this article, I review methods and concepts of comparative urban analysis, including systematic vs intensive comparisons, the scale of comparison, synchronic vs diachronic comparison, and comparison at different stages in a research trajectory. I also discuss empirical and epistemo logical linkages between comparisons of cities and comparisons of urban deposits as studied by high-definition archaeo logical methods. These issues of comparison can help integrate the analysis of urban networks with high-definition localized studies of urban deposits.
Journal of Anthropological Research, 2021
Charles Tilly proposed a model of durable social inequality that is potentially applicable to a w... more Charles Tilly proposed a model of durable social inequality that is potentially applicable to a wide range of societies. I demonstrate this potential by examining his causal mechanisms of inequality-exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation-as they apply to Aztec society immediately prior to the Spanish conquest of 1521. Tilly's model helps resolve key issues in the analysis of Aztec inequality and class structure. This application exemplifies the utility of Tilly's model in explaining social inequality in Aztec society and in unraveling causal relationships characteristic of ancient complex societies generally.
Open Archaeology, 2021
We carried out a full-coverage survey of the Yautepec Valley in the 1990s to reconstruct demograp... more We carried out a full-coverage survey of the Yautepec Valley in the 1990s to reconstruct demography and settlements and their changes through time. We investigated the extent to which well-documented developments in the adjacent Basin of Mexico were paralleled in Yautepec, as well as the impact of regional empires and economies on local society. Our analyses focused on Teotihuacan relations in the Classic period and relations with the Aztec empire and the Mesoamerican world system in the Middle and Late Postclassic periods. In addition to locating, mapping, and describing sites and taking grab-bag artifact collections, we also made a series of systematic intensive surface collections (5 × 5 m) and test excavations at samples of Classic and Postclassic sites. In this paper, we describe the survey and changing settlement patterns in the Yautepec Valley. We also present several analyses of changing patterns of urbanization through the Prehispanic era. We conclude with a synthesis of changing social and cultural dynamics in this region.
Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 2020
Urban agglomeration economies make cities central to theories of modern economic growth. There is... more Urban agglomeration economies make cities central to theories of modern economic growth. There is historical evidence for the presence of Smithian growth and agglomeration effects in English towns c.1450-1670, but seminal assessments deny the presence of agglomeration effects and productivity gains to Early Modern English towns. This study evaluates the presence of increasing returns to scale (IRS) in aggregate urban economic outputs-the empirical signature of feedbacks between Smithian growth and agglomeration effects-among the towns of 16th century England. To do so, we test a model from settlement scaling theory against the 1524/5 Lay Subsidy returns. Analysis of these data indicates that Tudor towns exhibited IRS-a finding that is robust to alternative interpretations of the data. IRS holds even for the smallest towns in our sample, suggesting the absence of town size thresholds for the emergence of agglomeration effects. Spatial patterning of scaling residuals further suggests regional demand-side interactions with Smithian-agglomeration feedbacks. These findings suggest the presence of agglomeration effects and Smithian growth in pre-industrial English towns. This begs us to reconsider the economic performance of Early Modern English towns, and suggests that the qualitative economic dynamics of contemporary cities may be applicable to premodern settlements in general.
https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/the-geoarchaeology-of-a-terraced-landscape/ The toil of several m... more https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/the-geoarchaeology-of-a-terraced-landscape/
The toil of several million peasant farmers in Aztec Mexico transformed lakebeds and mountainsides into a checkerboard of highly productive fields. This book charts the changing fortunes of one Aztec settlement and its terraced landscapes from the twelfth to the twenty-first century. It also follows the progress and missteps of a team of archaeologists as they pieced together this story. Working at a settlement in the Toluca Valley of central Mexico, the authors used fieldwalking, excavation, soil and artifact analyses, maps, aerial photos, land deeds, and litigation records to reconstruct the changing landscape through time. Exploiting the methodologies and techniques of several disciplines, they bring context to eight centuries of the region’s agrarian history, exploring the effects of the Aztec and Spanish Empires, Reform, and Revolution on the physical shape of the Mexican countryside and the livelihoods of its people. Accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike, this well-illustrated and well-organized volume provides a step-by-step guide that can be applied to the study of terraced landscapes anywhere in the world.
At Home with the Aztecs: An Archaeologist Uncovers their Daily Life. To be released March 3, 2016... more At Home with the Aztecs: An Archaeologist Uncovers their Daily Life. To be released March 3, 2016, Routledge. I am now on Twitter, and tweeting at least one message a day from the book. Check it out: https://twitter.com/MichaelESmith: #AtHomeWithAztecs. My website for the book is now up: http://smithaztecbook.wikispaces.asu.edu/.
BLURB: At Home with the Aztecs provides a fresh view of Aztec society, focusing on households and communities instead of kings, pyramids, and human sacrifice. This new approach offers an opportunity to humanize the Aztecs, moving past the popular stereotype of sacrificial maniacs to demonstrate that these were successful and prosperous communities. Michael Smith engagingly describes the scientific, logistic and personal dimensions of archaeological fieldwork, drawing on decades of excavating experience and considering how his research was affected by his interaction with contemporary Mexican communities. Through first-hand accounts of the ways archaeologists interpret sites and artifacts, the book illuminates how the archaeological process can illuminate ancient families and communities. Smith’s research also redefines success, prosperity and resilience in ancient societies, making this book suitable not only for those interested in the Aztecs but in the examination of resilient households and communities across space and time.
Smith, Michael E. (editor), 2015 Artefactos Domésticos de Casas Posclásicas en Cuexcomate y Ca... more Smith, Michael E. (editor), 2015 Artefactos Domésticos de Casas Posclásicas en Cuexcomate y Capilco, Morelos. BAR International Series, vol. 2696. Archaeopress, Oxford.
This is "volume 2" to my 1992 excavation report (FINALLY!!!).
Part of a resurgence in the comparative study of ancient societies, this book presents a variety ... more Part of a resurgence in the comparative study of ancient societies, this book presents a variety of methods and approaches to comparative analysis through the examination of wide-ranging case studies. Each chapter is a comparative study, and the diverse topics and regions covered in the book contribute to the growing understanding of variation and change in ancient complex societies. The authors explore themes ranging from urbanization and settlement patterns, to the political strategies of kings and chiefs, to the economic choices of individuals and households. The case studies cover an array of geographical settings, from the Andes to Southeast Asia. The authors are leading archaeologists whose research on early empires, states, and chiefdoms is at the cutting edge of scientific archaeology.
"Publishers blurb: -- A thorough examination of Aztec origins and civilization including religio... more "Publishers blurb:
-- A thorough examination of Aztec origins and civilization including religion, science, and thought
-- Incorporates the latest archaeological excavations and research into explanations of the Spanish conquest and the continuity of Aztec culture in Central Mexico
-- Expanded coverage includes key topics such as writing, music, royal tombs, and Aztec predictions of the end of the world "
"The Aztecs ruled much of Mexico from the thirteenth century until the Spanish conquest in 1521. ... more "The Aztecs ruled much of Mexico from the thirteenth century until the Spanish conquest in 1521. Outside of the imperial capital of Tenochtitlan, various urban centers ruled the numerous city-states that covered the central Mexican landscape.
Aztec City-State Capitals is the first work to focus attention outside Tenochtitlan, revealing these dozens of smaller cities to have been the central hubs of political, economic, and religious life, integral to the grand infrastructure of the Aztec empire.
Focusing on building styles, urban townscapes, layouts, and designs, Michael Smith combines two archaeological approaches: monumental (excavations of pyramids, palaces, and public buildings) and social (excavations of houses, workshops, and fields). As a result, he is able to integrate the urban-built environment and the lives of the Aztec peoples as reconstructed from excavations.
Smith demonstrates the ways in which these city-state capitals were different from Tenochtitlan and convincingly argues that urban design is the direct result of decisions made by political leaders to legitimize their own power and political roles in the states of the Aztec empire."
Cities are a palimpsest of tangible forms and intangible practices that can be built upon, and th... more Cities are a palimpsest of tangible forms and intangible practices that can be built upon, and that can serve to develop new practices. Political leaders, historians, theoreticians, and practitioners explored, reused, and reinterpreted earlier urban forms even before the advent of the discipline of planning in the mid-19th century, creating design traditions and enacting a sort of planning history before the term. Ever since, the same groups of people, plus professional planners, have gone on to reference historical urban form explicitly to change ongoing practice or at least to inspire current discussion, occasionally picking up geographically and temporally distant examples. How planning professionals interpreted or understood past cities, and their inclusion or exclusion of specific references, usually derived more from their intellectual context and their political or social interests than from a scholarly concern for analyzing historical cities in their own terms. The distinct processes of design and historical exploration reinforce each other, leading to advanced knowledge on some places and traditions, and less on others. This has created cycles of repetition and reconfirmation, a feedback loop that has influenced both planning and planning history. Sites where planning history has been traditionally written, such as Europe and the US, have more power over planning traditions, and their references to the ancient past of Greece and Rome has both taken these traditions out of their historical networks, and given those cultures a strong presence in the collective conscience. For most of history, the use of past models to create or interpret the present—whether by rulers, architects, historians, or design practitioners—was a highly ideological practice. The past was not seen as something to understand on its own terms, but rather a source of ideas to reinforce contemporary ideas and practices. These references to the past have had a profound impact on the built environment, and in the past century they have often furthered the construction of nationalist goals and identities. This chapter explores the various motives for turning to planning history: to build new cities and buildings; for military, communal, religious, ideological or other reasons; and for aesthetic, cultural, nationalistic, and global inspiration. We identify two broad historical categories that we label ancient planning ideologies and modern planning ideologies. Our identification of these two types of ideological influence on planning is not intended to reify or essentialize a static " ancient-modern " dichotomy, but rather to talk about broad patterns in the use of the past by politicians, historians, and planners. Ancient planning ideologies focused on rulership, politics, and cosmic glory. They were present in most ancient and early urban traditions, from Mesopotamia to the Aztecs. Cities in these
I describe a new approach to understanding processes of village aggregation and urbanization in t... more I describe a new approach to understanding processes of village aggregation and urbanization in the past. The key concept—energized crowding—refers to the social effects of large numbers of social interactions that take place within settlements. Demographic processes of population growth and settlement nucleation (aggregation and urbanization) lead to increased energized crowding, which in turn generates a variety of social outcomes. I discuss those outcomes under three headings: scalar stress, community formation, and economic growth. In this model, aggregation and urbanization are crucial processes that lead—by way of energized crowding—to many documented social outputs in both contemporary and past settlement systems. Because this is a new approach for archaeology, conceptual tools for understanding these processes must be borrowed from other social sciences. In particular, recent research on settlement scaling provides empirical and theoretical support for the notion that aggregation and urbanization were of fundamental importance in generating social change in the past. Population aggregation—the concentration of formerly dispersed people into villages, towns, and cities—is one of the most consequential processes in the history of human society. When people come together in a settlement, the number and level of interactions among individuals increases exponentially, and these interactions have generative power. That is, they bring about a variety of social changes, both positive and negative. Research by sociologists and anthropologists has tended to focus on the negative consequences of urbanization—increased levels of stress, crime, poverty, and alienation. Research by economists and geographers, on the other hand, emphasize the positive consequences of aggregation. The acceleration of face-to-face social interaction in larger and denser settlements stimulates knowledge transfer, technological innovation, and economic growth. One well-documented finding for contemporary cities is that as cities grow larger, their per-capital productivity increases; individuals are more productive in larger cities (Bettencourt 2013; Pumain 2012). These positive and negative consequences of aggregation and urbanization are two sides of the same coin. Whether talking about the aggregation of small early farming groups into villages or the processes of rural-to-urban migration that lead to urbanization in the developing world today, the results are similar. Increased numbers of people living in close contact activates a process that architectural historian Spiro Kostof (1991:37) called energized crowding: " Cities are places where a certain energized crowding of people takes place. This has nothing to do with absolute size or with absolute numbers; it has to do with settlement density. " While research suggests that the magnitude of the social effects of energized crowding does in fact depend on
We describe methods of coding and analyzing historical and archaeological data for comparative an... more We describe methods of coding and analyzing historical and archaeological data for comparative analysis of premodern cities. As part of a larger study of spatial access to urban services, we identify eight relevant contextual domains and define variables for each domain. Information from publications on each city is assembled, and the data are coded independently by three scholars and checked for agreement. To date, we have completed contextual coding for 15 cities. Here, we focus on methods to analyze relationships among variables within contextual domains using two example domains—Class Mobility and Governance. Key methodological points involve the problem of missing data, multiple tests with an appropriate correction, and the importance of variation among cases for effective analysis of a domain. Our interpretation of preliminary findings highlights a degree of independence between two different arenas of social life that may relate to collective action. Documentation of our procedures contributes to a growing body of systematic, comparative, cross-cultural analyses of mid-size samples. This study is distinctive in its focus on cities rather than cultures, societies, or polities.
Ortman, Scott G., Kaitlyn E. Davis, José Lobo, Michael E. Smith, Luis M.A. Bettencourt and Aaron ... more Ortman, Scott G., Kaitlyn E. Davis, José Lobo, Michael E. Smith, Luis M.A. Bettencourt and Aaron Trumbo (2016) Settlement Scaling and Economic Change in the Central Andes. Journal of Archaeological Science 73:94-106.
In: Archaeology of the Human Experience, Michelle Hegmon, ed., Archaeological Papers vol 27, Amer... more In: Archaeology of the Human Experience, Michelle Hegmon, ed., Archaeological Papers vol 27, Amer. Anth. Assoc. We use spatial analytical methods to illuminate one aspect of the urban experience: equity of access to facilities that provide material, religious, and assembly services. We compare three cities known from archaeology (Teotihuacan, Tikal, and Empuries) and three historical cities (Bhaktapur, Chester, and Lamu). Some neighborhoods had better access to service facilities than others, pointing to ancient patterns of spatial inequality. Data on house size suggest that status also impacted service access. Greater travel time to service facilities negatively impacts the well-being of urban residents in two ways: it reduces access to key services, and it takes time away from other activities. Our methods for identifying these spatial patterns of inequality open a new window on the implications of social inequality for the premodern urban experience. [Urban services, social inequality, spatial analysis, human experience]
Smith, Michael E., Timothy Dennehy, April Kamp-Whittaker, Benjamin Stanley, Barbara L. Stark and ... more Smith, Michael E., Timothy Dennehy, April Kamp-Whittaker, Benjamin Stanley, Barbara L. Stark and Abigail York (2016) Conceptual Approaches to Service Provision in Cities throughout History. Urban Studies 53(8): 1574-1590.
UGEC Viewpoints (Urbanization and Global Environmental Change), 2012
Smith, Michael E., and José Lobo, 2016 Comment on Jennings and Earle, "Urbanization, State For... more Smith, Michael E., and José Lobo, 2016 Comment on Jennings and Earle, "Urbanization, State Formation, and Cooperation: A Reappraisal". Current Anthropology 57(5):485-486.
Stanley, Benjamin W., Timothy Dennehy, Michael E. Smith, Barbara L. Stark, Abigail York, George L... more Stanley, Benjamin W., Timothy Dennehy, Michael E. Smith, Barbara L. Stark, Abigail York, George L. Cowgill, Juliana Novic and Gerald Ek (2015) Urban Service Access in Premodern Cities: An Exploratory Comparison. Journal of Urban History (published online first).
This is the first full publication from our urban services project. No, NSF was not crazy to give us the funding!
Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern Eu... more Medieval European urbanization presents a line of continuity between earlier cities and modern European urban systems. Yet, many of the spatial, political and economic features of medieval European cities were particular to the Middle Ages, and subsequently changed over the Early Modern Period and Industrial Revolution. There is a long tradition of demographic studies estimating the population sizes of medieval European cities, and comparative analyses of these data have shed much light on the long-term evolution of urban systems. However, the next step—to systematically relate the population size of these cities to their spatial and socioeconomic characteristics—has seldom been taken. This raises a series of interesting questions, as both modern and ancient cities have been observed to obey area-population relationships predicted by settlement scaling theory. To address these questions, we analyze a new dataset for the settled area and population of 173 Euro-pean cities from the early fourteenth century to determine the relationship between population and settled area. To interpret this data, we develop two related models that lead to differing predictions regarding the quantitative form of the population-area relationship, depending on the level of social mixing present in these cities. Our empirical estimates of model parameters show a strong densification of cities with city population size, consistent with patterns in contemporary cities. Although social life in medieval Europe was orchestrated by hierarchical institutions (e.g., guilds, church, municipal organizations), our results show no statistically significant influence of these institutions on agglomeration effects. The similarities between the empirical patterns of settlement relating area to population observed here support the hypothesis that cities throughout history share common principles of organization that self-consistently relate their socioeconomic networks to structured urban spaces.
American Anthropologist 117(1): 178-179
I wrote this paper to provide a foundation for applying urban scaling methods to ancient cities. ... more I wrote this paper to provide a foundation for applying urban scaling methods to ancient cities. The urbanization processes that produce regular scaling relationships depend on the ability of people to move from rural areas into cities, and to move among cities. Many of us assumed that people in the ancient world were less mobile than modern agrarian populations, so I set out to investigate the situation. I learned three things: (1) people indeed moved around a lot in ancient urban systems; (2) there are regular drivers of these movements; and (3) the migration literature in archaeology is a morass, and I have no desire to return to this topic!
I wrote this paper in part to put the apartment compounds of Teotihuacan into a comparative frame... more I wrote this paper in part to put the apartment compounds of Teotihuacan into a comparative framework. Rene Millon used to say that the apartment compounds were a unique form of housing, but I felt the need to establish that fact empirically (which is partially accomplished in this paper).
Urban Studies, 2011. This paper presents initial findings from longer-term transdisciplinary rese... more Urban Studies, 2011. This paper presents initial findings from longer-term transdisciplinary research concerning the social dynamics of urban neighbourhoods. It examines the spatial clustering of ethnicity and class in neighbourhoods over urban history, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia to contemporary cities. Fourteen distinct drivers of social clustering are identified, grouped under the headers of macro-structural forces, the state, local regimes and institutions, and bottom–up processes. The operation of these processes is examined through three historical and three archaeological case studies of clustering. It is concluded that: clustering is a common, but not universal, attribute of cities; there is much variation in clustering patterns, both within and between cities and urban traditions; and, consideration of a wide variety of drivers is required to understand historical and modern residential dynamics.
This is the printed version (proof), 2018. The paper has been posted by OUP in the online version... more This is the printed version (proof), 2018. The paper has been posted by OUP in the online version of the book since 2016. The print version will be out soon.
In "The Encyclopedia of Empire," ed. John M. MacKenzie. Wiley-Blackwell.
In The Encyclopedia of Empire, John M. MacKenzie, ed. Wiley-Blackwell. The title was given to me... more In The Encyclopedia of Empire, John M. MacKenzie, ed. Wiley-Blackwell.
The title was given to me for a paper arguing that there was no such thing as a Toltec empire. I guess you could view it as an ironic title, which would make me a fashionable postmodern scholar.
Cliodynamics: The Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History 3(2): 333-343, 2012. I'm not s... more Cliodynamics: The Journal of Theoretical and Mathematical History 3(2): 333-343, 2012. I'm not sure why I didn't post this previously
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Jan 1, 1987
NEWLY UPLOADED: Antiquity, vol 91: 520-529, 2017
Smith, Michael E. (2015) How can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? The SAA Archaeological R... more Smith, Michael E. (2015) How can Archaeologists Make Better Arguments? The SAA Archaeological Record 15(4):18-23.
Smith, Michael E. (1992) Braudel's Temporal Rhythms and Chronology Theory in Archaeology. In An... more Smith, Michael E. (1992) Braudel's Temporal Rhythms and Chronology Theory in Archaeology. In Annales, Archaeology, and Ethnohistory, edited by A. Bernard Knapp, pp. 23-34. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Smith, Michael E. (2014) Do Publishing Trends Collide with the Grand Challenges of Archaeology?... more Smith, Michael E. (2014) Do Publishing Trends Collide with the Grand Challenges of Archaeology? SAA Archaeological Record 14 (4): 5.
In; Rethinking the Aztec Economy, ed. D. Nichols, F. Berdan & M. Smith. 2017. University of Arizo... more In; Rethinking the Aztec Economy, ed. D. Nichols, F. Berdan & M. Smith. 2017. University of Arizona Press
From: Oxford handbook of the Aztecs, ed. D. Nichols and E. Rodriguez-Alegria, 2016.
In: Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, edited by Deborah L. Nichols and Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría. Ox... more In: Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, edited by Deborah L. Nichols and Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría. Oxford University Press, New York. (in press)
![Research paper thumbnail of "Sociedad y desarollo económico" (2015) [Aztec society]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/36501776/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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The New Fire Ceremony is one of the few Aztec rituals documented in both the archaeological and h... more The New Fire Ceremony is one of the few Aztec rituals documented in both the archaeological and historical records. The Spanish chroniclers described the New Fire Ceremony as an imperial celebration of the renewal of cosmic time that was observed on the local level by the renewal of household goods. George C. Vaillant first proposed the identification of artifact dumps at Aztec sites with descriptions of these local celebrations. We describe unpublished artifact dumps excavated by Vaillant at Chiconautla and Nonoalco in the Basin of Mexico and by Smith at Cuexcomate in Morelos and show that their context and content support Vaillant's hypothesis. Our data suggest that the New Fire Ceremony was an ancient and widespread ritual in Postclassic central Mexico that was appropriated by the Aztec empire as part of its program of ideological legitimization and control.
Smith, Michael E. 2012, El almacenamiento en la economía Azteca: una perspectiva comparativa.... more Smith, Michael E. 2012, El almacenamiento en la economía Azteca: una perspectiva comparativa. In Almacenamiento prehispánico del Norte de México al Altiplano Central, edited by Séverine Bortot, Dominique Michelet and Véronique Darras, pp. 203-220. CEMCA (Centre d'études mexicaines et centroaméricaines), Mexico City.
Smith, Michael E. and Maëlle Sergheraert (2012) The Aztec Empire. In The Oxford Handbook of Mes... more Smith, Michael E. and Maëlle Sergheraert (2012) The Aztec Empire. In The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology, edited by Deborah L. Nichols and Christopher Pool, pp. 449-458. Oxford University Press, New York.
Smith, Michael E. (2011) Aztecs. In Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ... more Smith, Michael E. (2011) Aztecs. In Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, edited by Timothy Insoll, pp. 556-570. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
American anthropologist, Jan 1, 1986
Ancient Mesoamerica 27(1): 133-147 We analyze residential architecture and domestic artifacts as... more Ancient Mesoamerica 27(1): 133-147 We analyze residential architecture and domestic artifacts as expressions of wealth, prestige, and social class at three Aztec-period settlements in Morelos, Mexico: Capilco, Cuexcomate, and Yautepec. House size, as expressed in both floor area and construction volume, shows a strongly bimodal distribution that we interpret as marking elite and commoner residences. We test this interpretation with two artifactual indices of household wealth. One is designed to maximize the elite-commoner distinction in each setting, but is not directly comparable among contexts. The other is a simpler generic wealth index that can be compared among sites and across time. We also consider variability within the commoner class in house size and artifact inventories. While some degree of variation is present, the extent of variation is minor in comparison to the level of elite-commoner differences.
The Archaeology and Politics of Food and Feasting in Early States and Empires, 2003
Smith, Michael E., 2012, Graneros y almacenamiento de maíz en Morelos postclásico. In Almacenam... more Smith, Michael E., 2012, Graneros y almacenamiento de maíz en Morelos postclásico. In Almacenamiento prehispánico del Norte de México al Altiplano Central, edited by Séverine Bortot, Dominique Michelet and Véronique Darras, pp. 159-172. CEMCA (Centre d'études mexicaines et centroaméricaines), Mexico City.
Smith, Michael E. (1994) Economies and Polities in Aztec-period Morelos: Ethnohistoric Introduc... more Smith, Michael E. (1994) Economies and Polities in Aztec-period Morelos: Ethnohistoric Introduction. In Economies and Polities in the Aztec Realm, edited by Mary G. Hodge and Michael E. Smith, pp. 313-348. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, Albany.
Journal of Field Archaeology 15:349-358.
IN: Domestic Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by Patricia Plunket, pp. 93-114. Monograph, ... more 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. and Jennifer Wharton (2003) Aztec-Style Pitcher from a Late Postclassic Buria... more Smith, Michael E. and Jennifer Wharton (2003) Aztec-Style Pitcher from a Late Postclassic Burial Offering in Morelos. Mexicon 25:2-3.
Smith, Michael E. (2003) Decorated Serving Vessels from Postclassic Burial Offerings in Morelos. Mexicon 25:3.
Latin American Antiquity, 2017
We present quantitative data on population size and plaza area in three groups of ancient Mesoame... more We present quantitative data on population size and plaza area in three groups of ancient Mesoamerican settlements: a sample of 30 Late Postclassic cities and towns from throughout Mesoamerica and two regional settlement systems from the Classic period, including south-central Veracruz (the Mixtequilla) and the Palenque region. Plaza size scales with population in a sublinear relationship in all three groups, meaning that larger settlements had considerably less plaza area per capita than smaller settlements. These results suggest that the currently popular interpretation drawn from Classic Maya archaeology that plazas were places designed to hold the entire urban population for passive viewing of spectacles may be incomplete. We argue that the observed quantitative relationships between population and plaza area support the notion that plazas were designed to be used for a variety of purposes—including several types of ceremonies and marketplaces—held at different times following a regular schedule. Presentamos datos cuantitativos sobre el tamaño de la población y el área de la plaza en tres grupos de antiguos asentamientos Mesoamericanos: una muestra de 30 ciudades y pueblos del período Posclásico Tardío de toda Mesoamérica y dos sistemas de asentamientos regionales del período Clásico, incluyendo el sur-central de Veracruz (La Mixtequilla) y la región de Palenque. El área de la plaza varía con respecto al tamaño de la población en una relación sublineal en los tres grupos. Los datos sugieren que los asentamientos mayores tenían considerablemente menos área de plaza per cápita que los asentamientos más pequeños. Los resultados de este estudio demuestran que la interpretación actualmente popular, del período Clásico Maya, de las plazas como lugares creados para sostener a toda la población urbana para la visión pasiva de los espectáculos, puede ser incompleta. Argumentamos que las relaciones cuantitativas observadas entre la población y el área de la plaza apoyan la idea de que estas últimas fueron creadas a fin de ser usadas para una variedad de propósitos —incluyendo varios tipos de ceremonias y mercados— en diferentes momentos siguiendo un horario regular.
We present quantitative data on population size and plaza area in three groups of ancient Mesoame... more We present quantitative data on population size and plaza area in three groups of ancient Mesoamerican settlements: a sample of 30 Late Postclassic cities and towns from throughout Mesoamerica and two regional settlement systems from the Classic period, including south-central Veracruz (the Mixtequilla) and the Palenque region. Plaza size scales with population in a sublinear relationship in all three groups, meaning that larger settlements had considerably less plaza area per capita than smaller settlements. These results suggest that the currently popular interpretation drawn from Classic Maya archaeology that plazas were places designed to hold the entire urban population for passive viewing of spectacles may be incomplete. We argue that the observed quantitative relationships between population and plaza area support the notion that plazas were designed to be used for a variety of purposes—including several types of ceremonies and marketplaces—held at different times following a regular schedule. Presentamos datos cuantitativos sobre el tamaño de la población y el área de la plaza en tres grupos de antiguos asentamientos Mesoamericanos: una muestra de 30 ciudades y pueblos del período Posclásico Tardío de toda Mesoamérica y dos sistemas de asentamientos regionales del período Clásico, incluyendo el sur-central de Veracruz (La Mixtequilla) y la región de Palenque. El área de la plaza varía con respecto al tamaño de la población en una relación sublineal en los tres grupos. Los datos sugieren que los asentamientos mayores tenían considerablemente menos área de plaza per cápita que los asentamientos más pequeños. Los resultados de este estudio demuestran que la interpretación actualmente popular, del período Clásico Maya, de las plazas como lugares creados para sostener a toda la población urbana para la visión pasiva de los espectáculos, puede ser incompleta. Argumentamos que las relaciones cuantitativas observadas entre la población y el área de la plaza apoyan la idea de que estas últimas fueron creadas a fin de ser usadas para una variedad de propósitos —incluyendo varios tipos de ceremonias y mercados— en diferentes momentos siguiendo un horario regular.
This is a corrected version of a paper initially published in Mexicon (37(5): 118-125). I was pro... more This is a corrected version of a paper initially published in Mexicon (37(5): 118-125). I was prompted to post this corrected version for two reasons: (1) the journal failed to incorporate final revisions; (2) the journal asked me to take down the posted article.
In The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities, edited by Marie Charlott... more In The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities, edited by Marie Charlotte Arnauld, Linda R. Manzanilla and Michael E. Smith, pp. 1-26. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Journal de la Société des Americanistes 97(1):51-73.
From Hispanic American Historical Review 91(3), 2011.
by Angela C. Huster, ME Smith, and Juliana Novic. IN: Bajo el volcán: Vida y ritualidad en torno... more by Angela C. Huster, ME Smith, and Juliana Novic. IN: Bajo el volcán: Vida y ritualidad en torno al Nevado de Toluca, edited by Silvina Vigliani and Roberto Junco, pp. 203-223. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
In Patrimonio Arqueológico de Toluca: Herencia Milenaria, edited by Fernando Guerrero Villagómez ... more In Patrimonio Arqueológico de Toluca: Herencia Milenaria, edited by Fernando Guerrero Villagómez and Ana Luisa Elias Moreno, pp. 91-106. H. Ayntamiento de Toluca and Implan, Toluca.
**Just got my copies of the book! It's great that the city of Toluca is promoting its ancient heritage.**
2015, In Homenaje al maestro Felipe Solís Olguín, edited by Roberto García Moll and Rafael Fierr... more 2015, In Homenaje al maestro Felipe Solís Olguín, edited by Roberto García Moll and Rafael Fierro Padilla, pp. 355-367. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Smith, Michael E., 2015, Mesoamerican State Formation in the Postclassic Period. In Expanding W... more Smith, Michael E., 2015, Mesoamerican State Formation in the Postclassic Period. In Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conquest, 500 CE - 1500 CE, edited by Benjamin Kedar and Merry Wiesner-Hanks, pp. 598-624. Cambridge History of the World, vol. 5. Cambridge University Press, New York.
I wrote this paper in 2007, ,and its been in production every since, with a few updates over the ... more I wrote this paper in 2007, ,and its been in production every since, with a few updates over the years. I may have missed the most recent literature, though.
Ancient Mesoamerica 20:175-18
Smith, Michael E. (2007) Tula and Chichén Itzá: Are We Asking the Right Questions? In Twin Tollan... more Smith, Michael E. (2007) Tula and Chichén Itzá: Are We Asking the Right Questions? In Twin Tollans: Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World, edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham, pp. 579-617. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.
Smith, Michael E. 1978 A Model for the Diffusion of the Shaft Tomb Complex from South America t... more Smith, Michael E.
1978 A Model for the Diffusion of the Shaft Tomb Complex from South America to West Mexico. Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 9(1-2): 179-204.
Rich Man, Poor Man (Wayne Curtis) 2018 American Archaeology 22 (2):32–37.
In many parts of the world, the earliest large aggregated settlements existed for only a short ti... more In many parts of the world, the earliest large aggregated settlements existed for only a short time. Large temporary aggregations are found among some hunter-gatherer societies, lasting from days to weeks to months. When large settlements acquired a more permanent character, some retained a rather ephemeral character and only existed for a few generations or less. This symposium explores two aspects of the social dynamics of such settlements: the forces and processes that led people to aggregate; and the forces and processes that led to the break-up of such settlements. We include both case studies of ancient settlements, and theoretical/comparative papers. Papers focus particularly on the following questions: (1) What was the relative role of ritual, economic, political forces, and defense, in creating and dissolving short-lived aggregations? (2) Were they a regular part of the rhythms of certain ancient settlement systems, as suggested by Graeber and Wengrow, or were they a rarer or more sporadic phenomenon? (3) Should ephemeral urban settlements be considered as evidence of failure and collapse, or rather of flexibility and adaptation? (4) What can such episodes of short-lived aggregation teach us about processes of urbanization in the past and present?
FERNÁNDEZ-GÖTZ, M. and Smith, M.E. (2024): The Archaeology of Early Cities: “What is the City but the People?”. Annual Review of Anthropology 53: 231-247.
The archaeology of early urbanism is a growing and dynamic field of research, which has benefited... more The archaeology of early urbanism is a growing and dynamic field of research, which has benefited in recent years from numerous advances at both a theoretical and a methodological level. Scholars are increasingly acknowledging that premodern urbanization was a much more diverse phenomenon than traditionally thought, with alternative forms of urbanism now identified in numerous parts of the world. In this article, we review recent developments, focusing on the following main themes: (a) what cities are (including questions of definitions); (b) what cities do (with an emphasis on the concentration of people, institutions, and activities in space); (c) methodological advances (from LiDAR to bioarchaeology); (d) the rise and fall of cities (through a focus on persistence); and (e) challenges and opportunities for urban archaeology moving forward. Our approach places people—with their activities and networks—at the center of analysis, as epitomized by the quotation from Shakespeare used as the subtitle of our article.