Profile of Bruce D. Smith Rchaeology Today Is a Very and a Member of the National Academy Different Field for Bruce D

PROFILE Profile of Bruce D. Smith rchaeology today is a very and a member of the National Academy different field for Bruce D. of Sciences. Griffin took an interest in Smith, a curator at the Smith- Smith and invited him to join a National sonian Institution’s National Science Foundation-funded excavation AMuseum of Natural History (Washing- the following summer in southeast Mis- ton, DC), than it was in 1965, when he souri. There, Griffin’s group was study- took his first college course in the sub- ing a Mississippian village dating from ject. Although he started his career ex- approximately A.D. 1300. Smith spent a cavating 1,000-year-old sites in Missouri, hot and humid summer in Missouri and today Smith uncovers long-curated began a professional collaboration and collections scattered in the massive ar- friendship with Griffin that would en- chived holdings of the Smithsonian and dure long after his undergraduate and other museums. He has traded in his graduate years in Ann Arbor. shovel and trowel for modern tools such Smith did not immediately know, as accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) however, that archaeology would be his radiocarbon dating, scanning electron career. ‘‘It was the ’60s, and it was ‘cool’ microscopy, and ancient DNA analysis. to do stuff that wasn’t establishment like Trained under researchers who helped law or medicine,’’ he says. ‘‘Archaeology overturn old paradigms, Smith has used was ‘out there,’ the summers were fun, many of the basic tenets of the ‘‘New and I just drifted into it.’’ Personally Archaeology’’ to structure his research and professionally, Smith was shaped by on pre-Columbian societies in the the times. ‘‘There was lots going on in Bruce D. Smith Americas. He started out studying the Ann Arbor in the mid-’60s,’’ he says. post-A.D. 1000 Mississippian chiefdoms ‘‘Bob Dylan was showing up at the local of eastern North America, investigating Town’’ and competing in year-round clubs, Commander Cody, the White their hunting and farming economies, athletics. Although his high school Panthers, Krazy Jim’s, Vietnam War political and spatial organization, and varsity football and golf teams rarely protests were heating up.’’ After gradua- factors important in their initial evolu- won, he found early success as a swim- tion in 1968, Smith taught seventh-grade tion. More recently, as part of the mer. Smith’s YMCA swim team won math in Inkster, MI, for a year to avoid Smithsonian Institution’s Archaeobiol- a number of state championships, and the draft, before finally joining an Army ogy Program, Smith has focused on his coach, Corey Van Fleet, played a Reserve medical unit where he trained improving the understanding of the critical role in shaping Smith’s teenage as a combat medic. To avoid cutting his temporal and cultural contexts of plant years, hiring him to work in the kitchen hair, Smith donned a short-hair wig for domestication and the transition from and later as a cabin counselor at Van his monthly Army Reserve meetings hunting-gathering to agriculture in the Fleet’s summer swim camp in northern over the next 5 years. In 1970, he re- New World. Michigan. turned to the University of Michigan to In his Inaugural Article published in Although Smith’s mother was a librar- begin graduate studies. this issue of PNAS (1), Smith revisits ian and his father a history professor at The late 1960s through the mid-1970s one of the most extensive and detailed Wayne State University (Detroit), was ‘‘a golden age for archaeology in early records of human cultural history Smith, like his two older brothers, was Ann Arbor,’’ Smith says. Griffin had in Mesoamerica. Smith reanalyzed plant not overly interested in academics in attracted some of the brightest young remains from the Coxcatlan Cave in high school. ‘‘I could get B’s and never Ph.D. archaeologists to Michigan, bring- Puebla, Mexico, which was occupied by take a book home. It was just easy,’’ he ing a wide range of new ideas and per- humans over a span of nearly 10,000 says. ‘‘I wasn’t working very hard.’’ spectives. Collectively, their approach was known as the ‘‘New Archaeology,’’ years. By using AMS radiocarbon dating Smith’s parents, concerned that he a paradigm shift in the field placing and current biological knowledge of do- might flounder in college with his dis- greater emphasis on the scientific mestication and taxonomy, his results mal study habits, arranged for him to method and hypothesis testing and at- reveal which areas of the cave had intact take an entrance examination for Cran- tempting to explain rather than simply deposits and which had been disturbed. brook School (Bloomfield Hills, MI) in describe cultural change over time. The Together with previous analyses of four the Detroit suburbs, where he was ‘‘ecological approach’’ was at the core of other caves in Mexico, the findings show accepted as a boarding student for his Michigan anthropology and archaeology, temporal and geographical trends in the senior year. Cranbrook’s mandatory which emphasized that analysis of inter- initial domestication and early spread of evening and weekend study halls for un- action between humans and their envi- many major American crops. derachieving students strengthened his ronment, such as plant and animal academic focus. He entered the Univer- assemblages found at archaeological Long Hair and Hot Summers sity of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) in sites, could provide a window into un- Smith grew up in Highland Park, MI, a 1964, ‘‘just as Ann Arbor of the 1960s derstanding past societies. The Univer- small city surrounded by Detroit, which was taking off,’’ he says. sity of Michigan professors ‘‘gave us was recognized during his high school Smith signed up for an introductory tools and approaches that would endure, years as having the highest per-capita anthropology class to fill out his fresh- murder rate in the United States. The man year schedule and liked it enough local YMCA and the public library, now to enroll the following year in a course This is a Proﬁle of a recently elected member of the National both burned and abandoned, provided on North American archaeology taught Academy of Sciences to accompany the member’s Inaugural refuge for Smith after school, he says, as by James B. Griffin, the director of the Article on page 9438. did acting in school plays such as ‘‘Our Museum of Anthropology at Michigan © 2005 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA www.pnas.org͞cgi͞doi͞10.1073͞pnas.0503921102 PNAS ͉ July 5, 2005 ͉ vol. 102 ͉ no. 27 ͉ 9435–9437 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 and on which we could build sustained tion, and nature and location of activi- a 2,000-year-old grass-lined storage pit productive careers,’’ he says. ‘‘Any time ties carried out there. during a 1950s excavation of Russell there is a paradigm crisis, there will be Cave in Alabama. Smith thought the lots of people trying new things, 90% of A Cigar Box of Seeds seed assemblage might represent the which never works out very well. The In 1977, Smith moved to Washington, stored harvest of a domesticated plant, Michigan archaeologists recognized DC, for a curator position in the rather than seeds collected from wild what would work from what wouldn’t Department of Anthropology at the stands of Chenopodium. With the help and shaped that into a successful long- National Museum of Natural History. of the museum’s scanning electron mi- term package.’’ Of the three main areas of responsibility croscope, Smith showed that the Russell in his curatorial position—research, pub- Cave seeds had very thin seed coats, Stories of Mississippian Farmsteads lic outreach, and collections—research comparable to those of modern domesti- When the time came to select a disser- has been his primary activity. cates in Mexico and South America tation topic, Smith found that all aspects When he started at the National (quinoa) and different from modern of the Missouri research on the Powers Museum of Natural History, Smith’s wild plants (7). Yarnell and others al- Phase Mississippian chiefdom had al- research interests turned to a consider- ready had identified two other locally ready been earmarked for other doc- ation of how Mississippian chiefdoms domesticated plants, sunflower and toral candidates, except one: a study of evolved out of earlier tribal-level socio- marshelder, but all three of these the animal bones from the sites. Smith political organizations in eastern North eastern crops were predated by early chose this area and expanded his disser- evidence of Cucurbita squash, an tation research to include Mississippian assumed introduction from Mexico. chiefdoms in a variety of environmental Smith’s efforts Thin rind fragments of Cucurbita dat- settings in the central Mississippi Valley. ing older than 5,000 B.P. had been re- Smith combined the detailed analysis of began in the early covered from several sites in the eastern faunal assemblages recovered from a U.S. and were thought to be clear evi- half-dozen Mississippian chiefdoms with 1980s with a cigar box dence of the early introduction of a the knowledge of life histories of prey domesticated squash from Mexico. Yet species and early European descriptions long forgotten in the Smith and archaeologist Wes Cowan of hunting patterns. His dissertation (who is also a host of the PBS television centered on why Mississippian societies attic of his own show ‘‘History Detectives’’) suspected consistently selected a limited set of ani- otherwise. They conjectured that the mal species as their primary prey (2, 3). museum. Cucurbita pepo squash had been inde- When Smith finished his Ph.D.

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