Bruce D. Smith | |
|---|---|
 Bruce D. Smith in 2003 | |
| Born | 1946 (age 77–78) |
| Occupation | Archaeologist |
Bruce D. Smith (born 1946) is an American archaeologist and curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History who primarily focuses on the interaction of humans with their environment, especially the origins of agriculture in eastern North America agricultural complex. [1] [2]
Smith was born in Iowa City, Iowa, the youngest of three brothers, and grew up in Highland Park, Michigan. His father was a history professor at Wayne State University and his mother was a librarian. He graduated from Cranbrook Schools, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1964, where his parents had sent him for his senior year to strengthen his study habits. His college degrees are all from the University of Michigan: BA 1968, MA 1971, PhD 1973. His first field excavation was as an undergraduate in southeast Missouri, studying the Mississippian culture. [1] [3] Smith was an assistant professor of anthropology at Loyola University Chicago (1973–1974) and University of Georgia (1974–1977) before beginning his 37+ year career at the Smithsonian. [1]
During the 1968–1969 school year, Smith taught 7th grade math in Inkster, Michigan instead of serving in the Vietnam War. [3] He then joined the United States Army Reserve for five years as a combat medic. For his reserve training periods he wore a short-hair wig so he would not have to cut his hair. [3] During his graduate school time he was part of a group of graduate students who belonged to the New Archaeology movement. His PhD dissertation was on the animal bones that had been found in the Missouri sites, focusing on why that culture hunted a small number of animal species. [1]
While at the Smithsonian, Smith has worked as an anthropologist, archaeologist, archaeobiologist, and curator. Much of his work there involves the National Museum of Natural History. While at the Smithsonian, Smith has been a member of several organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Interested in humanity's transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies, after arriving at the Smithsonian Smith began focusing on proving that plant domestication arose independently in eastern North America rather than having spread to there from Mexico. [4] [5] This work began in the early 1980s with a cigar box full of seeds that had been stored in the attic of the Smithsonian. [3] This box contained about 50,000 Chenopodium berlandieri (lamb's quarters, gooseberry) seeds. Helianthus (sunflower) and Iva annua (marshelder) had already been shown to have been domesticated early, but Cucurbita (squash and pumpkin) proved to have been domesticated even earlier. Using genetic analysis, Smith and others showed that Cucurbita pepo had been independently domesticated twice, once in Mexico and once in eastern North America. [1]
Smith married Melinda Zeder, who is an archaeobiologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Because she studies Old World animals and he studies New World plants, they have only co-authored three articles. [1] [6] [7] [8]
Smith has published nine books and over 120 articles and received these awards and honors: [1]
The 8th millennium BC spanned the years 8000 BC to 7001 BC. In chronological terms, it is the second full millennium of the current Holocene epoch and is entirely within the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) phase of the Early Neolithic. It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological and anthropological analysis, or by radiometric dating.
Domestication is a multi-generational mutualistic relationship between humans and other organisms, in which humans took over control and care to obtain a steady supply of resources including food. The process was gradual and geographically diffuse, based on trial and error.
Cucurbita is a genus of herbaceous fruits in the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae, native to the Andes and Mesoamerica. Five edible species are grown and consumed for their flesh and seeds. They are variously known as squash, pumpkin, or gourd, depending on species, variety, and local parlance. Other kinds of gourd, also called bottle-gourds, are native to Africa and belong to the genus Lagenaria, which is in the same family and subfamily as Cucurbita, but in a different tribe. These other gourds are used as utensils or vessels, and their young fruits are eaten much like those of the Cucurbita species.
Cucurbita pepo is a cultivated plant of the genus Cucurbita. It yields varieties of winter squash and pumpkin, but the most widespread varieties belong to the subspecies Cucurbita pepo subsp. pepo, called summer squash.
Agriculture in Mesoamerica dates to the Archaic period of Mesoamerican chronology. At the beginning of the Archaic period, the Early Hunters of the late Pleistocene era led nomadic lifestyles, relying on hunting and gathering for sustenance. However, the nomadic lifestyle that dominated the late Pleistocene and the early Archaic slowly transitioned into a more sedentary lifestyle as the hunter gatherer micro-bands in the region began to cultivate wild plants. The cultivation of these plants provided security to the Mesoamericans, allowing them to increase surplus of "starvation foods" near seasonal camps; this surplus could be utilized when hunting was bad, during times of drought, and when resources were low. The cultivation of plants could have been started purposefully, or by accident. The former could have been done by bringing a wild plant closer to a camp site, or to a frequented area, so it was easier access and collect. The latter could have happened as certain plant seeds were eaten and not fully digested, causing these plants to grow wherever human habitation would take them.
The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of various indigenous peoples of Central and North America: squash, maize ("corn"), and climbing beans. In a technique known as companion planting, the maize and beans are often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each year; squash is typically planted between the mounds. The cornstalk serves as a trellis for climbing beans, the beans fix nitrogen in their root nodules and stabilize the maize in high winds, and the wide leaves of the squash plant shade the ground, keeping the soil moist and helping prevent the establishment of weeds.
Robert McCormick Adams Jr. was an American anthropologist and secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1984–94). He worked in both the Near East and Mesoamerica. A long time professor of the University of Chicago, he was best known for his research in Iraq.
William Henry Holmes, known as W. H. Holmes, was an American explorer, anthropologist, archaeologist, artist, scientific illustrator, cartographer, mountain climber, geologist and museum curator and director.
Gordon Randolph Willey was an American archaeologist who was described by colleagues as the "dean" of New World archaeology. Willey performed fieldwork at excavations in South America, Central America and the Southeastern United States; and pioneered the development and methodology for settlement patterns theories. He worked as an anthropologist for the Smithsonian Institution and as a professor at Harvard University.
The Eastern Agricultural Complex in the woodlands of eastern North America was one of about 10 independent centers of plant domestication in the pre-historic world. Incipient agriculture dates back to about 5300 BCE. By about 1800 BCE the Native Americans of the woodlands were cultivating several species of food plants, thus beginning a transition from a hunter-gatherer economy to agriculture. After 200 BCE when maize from Mexico was introduced to the Eastern Woodlands, the Native Americans of the eastern United States and adjacent Canada slowly changed from growing local indigenous plants to a maize-based agricultural economy. The cultivation of local indigenous plants other than squash and sunflower declined and was eventually abandoned. The formerly domesticated plants returned to their wild forms.
Waldo Rudolph Wedel was an American archaeologist and a central figure in the study of the prehistory of the Great Plains. He was born in Newton, Kansas to a family of Mennonites.
David G. Anderson is an archaeologist in the department of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who specializes in Southeastern archaeology. His professional interests include climate change and human response, exploring the development of cultural complexity in Eastern North America, maintaining and improving the nation's Cultural Resource management (CRM) program, teaching and writing about archaeology, and developing technical and popular syntheses of archaeological research. He is the project director of the on-line Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA). and a co-director, with Joshua J. Wells, Eric C, Kansa, and Sarah Whitcher Kansa, of the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA)
Phyllis Morse (Anderson) is an American archaeologist.
George R. Milner is an American archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University. He has done archaeological research on sites encompassing a range of time periods in Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Kentucky, and has also worked in Egypt and Saipan (Micronesia). He has worked with prehistoric and historic human skeletal remains from eastern North America, Denmark, and Egypt. By using modern samples of known age from the United States, Switzerland, and Portugal, he has helped refine skeletal age estimation techniques.
C. Wesley Cowan is an American anthropologist, auctioneer, and appraiser of antiques. He is an owner of Cowan's Auctions, Inc. in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Coxcatlan Cave is a Mesoamerican archaeological site in the Tehuacán Valley, State of Puebla, Mexico. It was discovered by Richard MacNeish in the 1960s during a survey of the Tehuacán Valley. It was the initial appearance of three domesticated plants in the Tehuacan Valley that allowed an evaluation to be done again of the overall temporal context of the plant domestication in Mexico. In addition to plants, Coxcatlan Cave also provided nearly 75 percent of the classified stone tools from excavation.
John Daniel Rogers is an American archaeologist who is Curator of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He is well known for his archaeological work with the Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma and other sites in the southeastern United States, and has studied the rise of chiefdoms and empires across the world.
Cucurbita galeottii is a plant species of the genus Cucurbita. It is native to Oaxaca, Mexico. It has not been domesticated. There is very little known about this species. Nee reports that the species is a xerophyte and that Bailey only saw the species in photographs. It is only known from specimens that "lack roots, female flowers, fruits and seeds".
Guilá Naquitz Cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, is the site of early domestication of several food crops, including teosinte, squash from the genus Cucurbita, bottle gourds, and beans. This site is the location of the earliest known evidence for domestication of any crop on the continent, Cucurbita pepo, as well as the earliest known domestication of maize.
Melinda A. Zeder is an American archaeologist and Curator Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Her zooarchaeological research has revolutionized understandings of animal domestication.
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