Michael E Smith
Why did our Neolithic ancestors give up their lifestyles of relative freedom in order to live in crowded cities ruled by kings and elites? Why did Neolithic people who were used to relatively egalitarian village living assent to the social classes, inequality and poverty of early states and cities? This transition—called the Urban Revolution by archaeologists—was one of the most fundamental transformations in human history. Yet it remains one of the most poorly understood episodes of our past. As an archaeologist and comparative urbanist, I use four strategies to address these questions with my research:
Strategy 1: Reconstruct ancient society at Aztec sites and at Teotihuacan.-- I have studied the Aztecs, the last rather than the earliest Mesoamerican urban society. I believe that archaeologists need to figure out what life was like in the early cities and states before we can address questions of their origin. More recently, I am changing my focus to the Classic-period city of Teotihuacan.
Strategy 2: Focus on households and communities, not kings and elites.-- My fieldwork emphasizes the study of houses and domestic conditions, not temples, palaces, and tombs. This “household archaeology” approach studies society from the bottom up, from the “ground level,” in order to avoid the biases that come from traditional scholarly emphases on kings and elites.
Strategy 3: Analyze cities comparatively, from a transdisciplinary perspective.-- I analyze cities (and other social institutions) in a comparative, transdisciplinary framework. All social historical research needs to be comparative in order to reach solid conclusions about conditions in the past; cities and societies are too complex to be understood by any single academic discipline. Thus I collaborate with geographers, physicists, political scientists, sociologists, urban planners, sustainability scientists, and even economists (well, one economist.....).
Strategy 4: Use knowledge of the past to develop insights for the future.-- I am exploring ways to use knowledge from the past to develop insights for the present and the future. The past as revealed by archaeology has lessons for us today, but these can only be discovered and applied if research is done in a rigorous fashion, in a manner that relates in some way to social conditions today.
In case its not clear from the above, I am an empirical materialist scientist. I have little patience for interpretivism, relativism, post-structuralism, post-processualism, materiality, or other anti-positivist epistemologies and ontologies that have infected archaeology in the past few decades, leaving much of the field weak and sick.
For a non-technical introduction to strategies 1 and 2, see my paper "Life in the Provinces of the Aztec Empire."
For a non-technical introduction to strategies 3 and 4, see my paper, "The Role of Cities in Research in Contemporary Urbanization."
If you want to contact me, please send me a regular email (NOT through Academia.edu): [email protected]
For my blog, WIDE URBAN WORLD:
http://wideurbanworld.blogspot.com/
For my blog, PUBLISHING ARCHAEOLOGY:
http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/
For my blog, CALIXTLAHUACA ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT:
http://calixtlahuaca.blogspot.com/
For a transdisciplinary research project, "Urban Organization Through the Ages: Neighborhoods, Open Spaces, and Urban Life," see:
http://cities.asu.edu/
For other things, see my home page:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/
For a list of some of the books by Michael Smith that I did NOT write, see:
http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/[email protected]/lists/86163
For Trout Mask Replica, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout_Mask_Replica
Address: School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Box 2402
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
Strategy 1: Reconstruct ancient society at Aztec sites and at Teotihuacan.-- I have studied the Aztecs, the last rather than the earliest Mesoamerican urban society. I believe that archaeologists need to figure out what life was like in the early cities and states before we can address questions of their origin. More recently, I am changing my focus to the Classic-period city of Teotihuacan.
Strategy 2: Focus on households and communities, not kings and elites.-- My fieldwork emphasizes the study of houses and domestic conditions, not temples, palaces, and tombs. This “household archaeology” approach studies society from the bottom up, from the “ground level,” in order to avoid the biases that come from traditional scholarly emphases on kings and elites.
Strategy 3: Analyze cities comparatively, from a transdisciplinary perspective.-- I analyze cities (and other social institutions) in a comparative, transdisciplinary framework. All social historical research needs to be comparative in order to reach solid conclusions about conditions in the past; cities and societies are too complex to be understood by any single academic discipline. Thus I collaborate with geographers, physicists, political scientists, sociologists, urban planners, sustainability scientists, and even economists (well, one economist.....).
Strategy 4: Use knowledge of the past to develop insights for the future.-- I am exploring ways to use knowledge from the past to develop insights for the present and the future. The past as revealed by archaeology has lessons for us today, but these can only be discovered and applied if research is done in a rigorous fashion, in a manner that relates in some way to social conditions today.
In case its not clear from the above, I am an empirical materialist scientist. I have little patience for interpretivism, relativism, post-structuralism, post-processualism, materiality, or other anti-positivist epistemologies and ontologies that have infected archaeology in the past few decades, leaving much of the field weak and sick.
For a non-technical introduction to strategies 1 and 2, see my paper "Life in the Provinces of the Aztec Empire."
For a non-technical introduction to strategies 3 and 4, see my paper, "The Role of Cities in Research in Contemporary Urbanization."
If you want to contact me, please send me a regular email (NOT through Academia.edu): [email protected]
For my blog, WIDE URBAN WORLD:
http://wideurbanworld.blogspot.com/
For my blog, PUBLISHING ARCHAEOLOGY:
http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/
For my blog, CALIXTLAHUACA ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT:
http://calixtlahuaca.blogspot.com/
For a transdisciplinary research project, "Urban Organization Through the Ages: Neighborhoods, Open Spaces, and Urban Life," see:
http://cities.asu.edu/
For other things, see my home page:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/
For a list of some of the books by Michael Smith that I did NOT write, see:
http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/[email protected]/lists/86163
For Trout Mask Replica, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout_Mask_Replica
Address: School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Box 2402
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
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Recent Papers by Michael E Smith
inequality — social class and spatial inequality —
in relation to the distribution of neighbourhood
plazas at ancient Teotihuacan, a large premodern
urban centre in the Basin of Mexico. We use the digitized
map from the Teotihuacan Mapping Project
to identify publicly accessible plazas and 3-temple
complexes across the city, and we measure spatial
access to these facilities for elite and non-elite residents.
Our findings are twofold. First, Teotihuacan
had a large amount of assembly space, and all
Teotihuacanos had good access to it, irrespective
of class. This finding is consistent with a collective
model of Teotihuacan government. Second, there
is significant inequality in spatial access to service
facilities between elites and non-elites, with elites
living closer to facilities. This pattern of accessibility
suggests both relatively high quality of life for the
residents of Teotihuacan as well as the maintenance
of hierarchical inequality within the city.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
inequality — social class and spatial inequality —
in relation to the distribution of neighbourhood
plazas at ancient Teotihuacan, a large premodern
urban centre in the Basin of Mexico. We use the digitized
map from the Teotihuacan Mapping Project
to identify publicly accessible plazas and 3-temple
complexes across the city, and we measure spatial
access to these facilities for elite and non-elite residents.
Our findings are twofold. First, Teotihuacan
had a large amount of assembly space, and all
Teotihuacanos had good access to it, irrespective
of class. This finding is consistent with a collective
model of Teotihuacan government. Second, there
is significant inequality in spatial access to service
facilities between elites and non-elites, with elites
living closer to facilities. This pattern of accessibility
suggests both relatively high quality of life for the
residents of Teotihuacan as well as the maintenance
of hierarchical inequality within the city.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is "volume 2" to my 1992 excavation report (FINALLY!!!).
-- 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 "
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."
This is the first full publication from our urban services project. No, NSF was not crazy to give us the funding!
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.
Smith, Michael E. (2003) Decorated Serving Vessels from Postclassic Burial Offerings in Morelos. Mexicon 25:3.
**Just got my copies of the book! It's great that the city of Toluca is promoting its ancient heritage.**
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.