PROFILE

Profile of Bruce D. Smith

A
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
Museum 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 was ‘‘a golden age for archaeology in
Wayne State University (Detroit),
early records of human cultural history Ann Arbor,’’ Smith says. Griffin had
Smith, like his two older brothers, was
in Mesoamerica. Smith reanalyzed plant attracted some of the brightest young
not overly interested in academics in
remains from the Coxcatlan Cave in Ph.D. archaeologists to Michigan, bring-
high school. ‘‘I could get B’s and never
Puebla, Mexico, which was occupied by ing a wide range of new ideas and per-
take a book home. It was just easy,’’ he
humans over a span of nearly 10,000 spectives. Collectively, their approach
says. ‘‘I wasn’t working very hard.’’
years. By using AMS radiocarbon dating was known as the ‘‘New Archaeology,’’
Smith’s parents, concerned that he
and current biological knowledge of do- a paradigm shift in the field placing
might flounder in college with his dis-
mestication and taxonomy, his results greater emphasis on the scientific
mal study habits, arranged for him to
reveal which areas of the cave had intact method and hypothesis testing and at-
take an entrance examination for Cran-
deposits and which had been disturbed. tempting to explain rather than simply
brook School (Bloomfield Hills, MI) in
Together with previous analyses of four describe cultural change over time. The
the Detroit suburbs, where he was
other caves in Mexico, the findings show ‘‘ecological approach’’ was at the core of
accepted as a boarding student for his
temporal and geographical trends in the Michigan anthropology and archaeology,
senior year. Cranbrook’s mandatory
initial domestication and early spread of which emphasized that analysis of inter-
evening and weekend study halls for un-
many major American crops. action between humans and their envi-
derachieving students strengthened his
ronment, such as plant and animal
academic focus. He entered the Univer-
Long Hair and Hot Summers assemblages found at archaeological
sity of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) in
Smith grew up in Highland Park, MI, a sites, could provide a window into un-
1964, ‘‘just as Ann Arbor of the 1960s
small city surrounded by Detroit, which derstanding past societies. The Univer-
was taking off,’’ he says.
was recognized during his high school sity of Michigan professors ‘‘gave us
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

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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 ⬇50,000 early maize 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 兩 www.pnas.org兾cgi兾doi兾10.1073兾pnas.0503921102 Nuzzo

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 Tehuacán 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).
from domesticated crop plants. For the ‘‘She does animals from the Old World,
its from Coxcatlan Cave differ dramati-
past several years, he has worked with I do plants in the New World, so it
cally from their original age estimates. works out well.’’ Smith and Zeder also
Smith pooled the evidence of when the geneticists from the Max Planck Insti-
tute for Evolutionary Anthropology both serve on the Committee for Re-
major crop plants first appeared in all search and Exploration of the National
(Leipzig, Germany) on the early ge-
five caves and shows clear temporal Geographic Society, where they review
netic history of maize, as well as with
and spatial trends in the timing and approximately 400 grant proposals every
scholars from Harvard University
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-
intact. Richard MacNeish, the original search.’’ Smith says. ‘‘But we also get to
tions that I couldn’t work on by myself.
excavator of the cave, would have been have a lot of fun.’’
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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