Adam T. Smith

(PhD, U Arizona 1996) Associate Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences in the College is an archaeologist specializing in the Bronze and Iron Ages of the South Caucasus, Southwest Asia and central Eurasia; complex societies, state formation, and politics; archaeological theory; space and landscape; representation and aesthetics.
email: atsmith@uchicago.edu
Homepage / Project ArAGATS

Curriculum Vitae (PDF)

Selected Recent Publications:

Books and Edited Volumes:

n.d.  Regimes and Revolutions: Power, Violence, and Labor in Eurasia Between the Ancient and the Modern. Co-edited with Charles Hartley and B. Bike Yazicioglu. (in review with Cambridge University Press).

2009 The Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies I: The Foundations of Research and Regional Survey in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia (with Ruben Badalyan & Pavel Avetisyan). Chicago: Oriental Institute Press (OIP) series.

2007 Social Orders and Social Landscapes: Proceedings of the 2005 University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology. Co-edited with Laura Popova and Charles Hartley. Cambridge Scholars Press.

2006 Beyond the Steppe and the Sown: Proceedings of the 2002 University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology. Co-edited with David Peterson and Laura Popova. Colloquia Pontica Series. Brill, Leiden.

2003 The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities. The University of California Press, Berkeley.

2003 Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond. Co-edited with Karen Rubinson. The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Publications at UCLA, Los Angeles.

Articles and Book Chapters:

(In review)  'Yerevan, My Ancient Erebuni': Archaeological Repertoires, Public Assemblages, and the Manufacture of a (Post-) Soviet Nation. In Hartley, Yazicioglu & Smith, eds.,  Regimes and Revolutions: Power, Violence, and Labor in Eurasia Between the Ancient and the Modern.

(In press) Village, Fortress, and Town in Bronze and Iron Age Southern Caucasia: A Preliminary Report on the 2003-2006 Investigations of Project ArAGATS on the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Republic of Armenia (with R. Badalyan, I. Lindsay, L. Khatchadourian, and P. Avetisyan). Archäologische Mitteilunger aus Iran und Turan.

(Forthcoming) Pilot Gradiometry Survey a the Late Bronze Age Fortress Lower Town of Tsaghkahovit, Northwestern Armenia (with I. Lindsay and R. Badalyan). Archaeological Prospection.

2007  The Politics of Loss: Comments on a Powerful Death. In N. Laneri, ed., Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Oriental Institute Press, pp. 163-166.

2006 A History of Archaeological Practices in the Republic of Armenia (with Ian Lindsay). Journal of Field Archaeology 31(2):165-184.

2006 Prometheus Unbound: Southern Caucasia in Prehistory. Journal of World Prehistory 19(4): 229-279.

2006 Undisciplined Theory. Archaeological Dialogues 13(2): 158-163.

2006 Representational Aesthetics and Political Subjectivity: The Spectacular in Urartian Images of Performance. In Spectacle, Performance, and Power in Premodern Complex Society edited by T. Inomata and L. Coben, pp. 103-134. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

2005 Svyatilishche Pozdnego Bonzovogo Veka Gekharota (with R. Badalyan and P. Avetisyan). In Kul’tura Drevnej Armenii, XIII: Materialy Respublikanskoj Nauchnoj Sessii, pp. 109-115. Armenian Academy of Sciences, Yerevan.

2004 The End of the Essential Archaeological Subject. Archaeological Dialogues 11(1): 1-20.

2004 Early Complex Societies in Southern Caucasia: A Preliminary Report on the 2002 Archaeological Investigations by Project ArAGATS in the Tsakahovit Plain, Republic of Armenia (with Ruben Badalyan, Pavel Avetisyan, and Mkrtich Zardaryan). American Journal of Archaeology 108(1): 1-41.

2003 The Emergence of Socio-Political Complexity in Southern Caucasia (with Ruben Badalyan and Pavel Avetisyan). In Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond, edited by Adam T. Smith and Karen S. Rubinson. The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Publications at UCLA, Los Angeles.

2001 The Limitations of Doxa: Agency and Subjectivity from an Archaeological Point of View. Journal of Social Archaeology. 1(2): 155-171.

2000 Preliminary Report on the 1998 Archaeological Investigations of Project ArAGATS in the Tsakahovit Plain, Armenia (with Ruben Badalyan and Pavel Avetisyan). Studi Micenei ed Anatolici 42(1): 19-59.

2000 Rendering the Political Aesthetic: Political Legitimacy in Urartian Representations of the Built Environment. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19: 131-163.

1999 The Making of an Urartian Landscape in the Ararat Plain: A Study of State Architectonics. American Journal of Archaeology 103(1): 43-69.

1995 The Production of Space and the House of Xidi Sukur (with Nicholas David). Current Anthropology 36(3): 441-471.