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 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 ’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 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, , 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. in an- pendently domesticated twice from a thropology in 1973, the job market was previously unrecognized wild gourd, first tight, he says. At the American Anthro- America (6). Some archaeologists at the in Mexico and then again in eastern pological Association annual meeting time proposed that Mississippian culture North America. Smith and Cowan that year, he went to numerous job was the result of influence from Mexico, searched and found wild gourds still sur- interviews, most of which were disheart- such as through migration, trade, or reli- viving deep in the Arkansas Ozarks (8, ening. ‘‘I had a job interview on an ele- gion. Smith says Mexican influence had 9). Subsequent genetic analysis showed vator ride that lasted about 35 seconds. been invoked over the years as simplistic that C. pepo squash had in fact been I had another interview with a Colum- ‘‘big arrow’’ explanations for a wide independently domesticated twice, with bia University professor who asked me a range of other landmark pre-Columbian the pumpkin lineage originating in Mex- few questions while he was putting on cultural developments in eastern North ico and acorn and summer squashes his shoes,’’ he says. ‘‘Fortunately, I got America, including the initial appear- originating in the eastern U.S. These one offer, from Loyola University of ance of ceramics or the Hopewell cul- domestications appeared to have oc- Chicago, and I took it.’’ After a year, tural fluorescence around 2000 B.P. curred at about the same time the other Smith moved on to the University of These ‘‘south-of-the-border’’ scenarios eastern crop plants were being domesti- Georgia (Athens, GA), where he taught for cultural development had been re- cated (10, 11). as an Assistant Professor for 3 years jected by the early 1980s, save for agri- before being hired at the Smithsonian cultural origins. Layers in a Mexican Cave Institution. The first domesticated plants, it was After making the case for eastern At Georgia, Smith expanded his con- thought, were brought into eastern North America being one of the sideration of Mississippian chiefdoms. North America from Mexico. A few world’s independent centers of domes- He studied how their settlement pat- scholars, however, notably Richard tication (11, 12), Smith turned his terns and political organization varied Yarnell of the University of North attention to the early history of domes- across the river valley corridors of the Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC) and Charles ticated plants in Mexico. He concen- eastern U.S. (4), and he was the first to Heiser of Indiana University (Blooming- trated on five cave sites in Tamaulipas, look at the small outlying farmstead set- ton, IN), entertained the idea that east- Puebla, and Oaxaca, which had yielded tlements where most Mississippian fam- ern North America was an independent most of the relevant archaeological evi- ily groups lived. The Gypsy Joint site, a center of plant domestication. Suspect- dence in the 1950s and 1960s. Law- small, two-house Mississippian farm- ing that Heiser and Yarnell were cor- rence Kaplan, Professor Emeritus of stead he excavated in 1973 in southeast rect, Smith set out to develop a strong Biology at the University of Massachu- Missouri, provided an opportunity to try argument supporting this notion. His setts, Boston, already had begun to an explicitly problem-oriented analysis efforts began in the early 1980s with a reanalyze and date Phaseolus beans (5). He used various evidence recovered cigar box long forgotten in the attic of from the five cave sites, and a number from the site to select between alterna- his own museum. of other researchers were restudying tive hypotheses regarding the size and The cigar box contained Ϸ50,000 early assemblages. composition of the occupying group, small seeds of lambsquarter or goose- Smith focused on the cucurbit duration and seasonality of the occupa- foot (Chenopodium berlandieri) found in remains of bottle gourd and squash

9436 ͉ www.pnas.org͞cgi͞doi͞10.1073͞pnas.0503921102 Nuzzo Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 species (13, 14), and in his Inaugural Smith says, because it means that Mac- Smith’s wife, Melinda Zeder, is a col- Article (1) he presents his results on Neish’s resolute defense of the integrity league in the Archaeobiology Program the last of the five caves to be reana- of the stratigraphic layers of the cave at the National Museum of Natural His- lyzed, Coxcatlan Cave in the Tehuaca´n was about half-right. tory. ‘‘We talk every day about domesti- Valley of Puebla. As with similar stud- Now that analysis of the Mexican cation of plants and animals, but other ies of other caves and domesticated cave collections is complete, Smith has than the recent volume we coedited plants, direct AMS radiocarbon dates turned to related research questions with two geneticists, we haven’t pub- obtained on early domesticated cucurb- involving analysis of ancient DNA lished anything together,’’ he says (16). ‘‘She does animals from the Old World, its from Coxcatlan Cave differ dramati- from domesticated crop plants. For the I do plants in the New World, so it cally from their original age estimates. past several years, he has worked with geneticists from the Max Planck Insti- works out well.’’ Smith and Zeder also Smith pooled the evidence of when the both serve on the Committee for Re- major crop plants first appeared in all tute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) on the early ge- search and Exploration of the National five caves and shows clear temporal netic history of maize, as well as with Geographic Society, where they review and spatial trends in the timing and scholars from Harvard University approximately 400 grant proposals every sequence of initial domestication and (Cambridge, MA) on the question of year. The work takes up most of their subsequent diffusion of six domesti- how bottle gourds first reached the free time, but one of the perks is a cated species. Americas (15). This sort of collabora- 2-week trip every year to areas that Smith also examined the vertical and tion is relatively new to him. ‘‘Up until have received grant money. Two years horizontal location of the 71 radiocar- about 4 years ago, I was the old-model ago, they traveled to Madagascar, and bon dates now available for the cave scientist—solitary, where almost every- last year to China. In January 2006, and found that although the western thing I ever published was single- Smith and his wife will visit Libya and half of the cave had been markedly author,’’ he says. ‘‘But it got to the Egypt with the committee. ‘‘It’s a great disturbed, the eastern half was largely point where I wanted to address ques- way to see new potential areas for re- search.’’ Smith says. ‘‘But we also get to intact. Richard MacNeish, the original tions that I couldn’t work on by myself. have a lot of fun.’’ excavator of the cave, would have been I’m enjoying it, but collaboration is at least partly pleased with the results, also a lot of work.’’ Regina Nuzzo, Science Writer

1. Smith, B. D. (2005) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102, 7. Smith, B. D. (1984) Science 226, 165–167. 13. Smith B. D. (1977) Latin Am. Antiquity 8, 342– 9438–9445. 8. Cowan, C. W. & Smith, B. D. (1993) J. Ethnobiol. 383. 2. Smith, B. D. (1974) Hum. Ecol. 2, 31–45. 13, 17–54. 14. Smith, B. D. (1997) Science 276, 865–996. 3. Smith, B. D. (1974) Am. Antiquity 38, 274–291. 9. Smith, B. D. (1992) Rivers of Change: Essays on 15. Jaenicke-Despres, V., Buckler, E., Smith, B. D., 4. Smith, B. D., ed. (1978) Mississippian Settlement Early Agriculture in Eastern North America (Smith- Gilbert, M. T., Cooper, A., Doebley, J. & Paabo, Patterns (Academic, New York). sonian Inst., Washington, DC). S. (2003) Science 302, 1206–1208. 5. Smith, B. D. (1978) Prehistoric Patterns of Human 10. Decker-Walters, D., Walters, T., Cowan, C. W. & 16. Zeder, M., Emshwiller, E., Bradley, D. & Behavior: A Case Study in the Mississippi Valley Smith, B. D. (1993) J. Ethnobiol. 13, 55–72. Smith, B. D., eds., Documenting Domestication: (Academic, New York). 11. Smith, B. D. (1989) Science 246, 1566–1571. New Genetic and Archaeological Paradigms 6. Smith, B. D., ed. (1990) The Mississippian Emer- 12. Smith, B. D. (1995) The Emergence of Agriculture (Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, CA), in gence (Smithsonian Inst., Washington, DC). (Freeman, New York). press.

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