Adam T. Smith

Source: https://anthropology.cornell.edu/adam-t-smith Parent: https://anthropology.cornell.edu/grad-field-faculty

Overview

The central preoccupation of my research and writing is the role that the material world plays in our political lives. Our social worlds, from the ancient past to the modern present, are forged upon a dense thicket of objects, from the spaces and places we move through to the plethora of thingsthat orbit around us. Yet rarely do we pause to understand how this material world has shaped our political procedures and values. This neglect is particularly surprising since at root, the two dominant political traditions of the modern era—liberalism and socialism—are as concerned to define our relations to things (especially things as property) as they are to describe our ties to our fellow citizens. The savviest political thinkers have long recognized that in order to reshape the political community we must start by remolding our ties to the tangible world around us. While this instinct hints at the depth of our entanglement with material culture, it does not explain it or shed light on its historical formation. So how did we arrive at our intimate relationship with a material world that in the last two centuries has attained unprecedented ubiquity and complexity? And what are the implications of this avowedly archaeological view of the polity for the way we understand the principles and priorities of political association? These are the primary questions that thread through my scholarship and my current research seeks to advance this broad project in theoretical, historical, and empirical terms.

Currently, my investigations are focused on developing the emerging field of heritage forensics, which combines new technologies and humanistic methods to assemble evidence concerning abuses of cultural remains that can be used in a court of law and by publics seeking truth, reconciliation, and justice. Heritage forensics can attend to both the enrollment of cultural sites in ongoing conflicts and examine the historical formation of cultural fronts amidst long-simmering hostilities. With a particular focus on the extended rivalry between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Caucasus Heritage Watch, a research program I co-direct with Prof. Lori Khatchadourian (Cornell) and Prof. Ian Lindsay (Purdue), uses satellite-based Earth observation to monitor and document cultural heritage caught in the crosshairs of the conflict. Our book, Heritage Forensics: Culture on the Frontlines of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict (Cornell University Press, summer 2026), details the violence against cultural sites that has attended the conflict and outlines a set of concepts and methods for aligning heritage investigations with the forensic search for accountability.

Research Focus

My current research is spread across multiple projects. Caucasus Heritage Watch uses satellite image to monitor and document threats to cultural heritage in the South Caucasus.

Project ArAGATS is a collaborative research initiative in Armenia focused on documenting the region's long-term social and political dynamics from the Bronze Age to today.

The St. James AME Zion Community Excavations use archaeology as a forum for helping the Church and wider community tell empowering stories of Ithaca's past.

Awards and Honors

2025 Historic Ithaca Preservation Award for the exhibit Sacred Ground.\ 2023-2025 Fellow, Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity, Cornell University.\ 2023 Finalist, Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year, Social Sciences and Humanities.\ 2023 Certificate of Communal Partnership, St. James AME Zion Church, Ithaca NY.\ 2010-2011 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow.\ 2010-2011 Fellow, Cornell University Society for the Humanities.\ 2006-2007 Fellow, Howard Foundation.\ 2003-2004 Fellow, Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago.\ 2003 National Endowment for the Humanities/American Councils for International Education Collaborative Research Fellow.\ 1997-1999 Fellow, Michigan Society of Fellows, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.\

Professional Experience

Cornell University

2026-present Henry Scarborough Professor of Social Science
2021-2026 Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Anthropology.
2015-2021 Goldwin Smith Professor of Anthropology.
2011-2015 Professor, Department of Anthropology.

University of Chicago

2011 Professor, Department of Anthropology.
2005-2011 Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology.
2000-2005 Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology.

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1997-1999 Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies.

University of Arizona

1997 Lecturer, Department of Anthropology.

Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

2026 Heritage Forensics: Culture on the Frontlines of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict (with L. Khatchadourian, I. Lindsay, and H. Ghulyan). Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
2016 Fitful Histories and Unruly Publics: Rethinking Community and Temporality in Eurasian Archaeology. Co-edited with L. Khatchadourian, K. Weber, E. Hite). Brill Academic Publishers.
2015 The Political Machine: Assembling Sovereignty in the Bronze Age Caucasus. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
2012 The Archaeology of Power and Politics in Eurasia: Regimes and Revolutions. Co-edited with Charles Hartley and G. Bike Yazıcıoğlu. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
2009 The Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies I: The Foundations of Research and Regional Survey in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia (with R. Badalyan and P. Avetisyan). Oriental Institute Press, Chicago.
2007 Social Orders and Social Landscapes: Proceedings of the 2005 University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology. Co-edited with L. Popova and C. Hartley. Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle.
2006 Beyond the Steppe and the Sown: Proceedings of the 2002 University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology. Co-edited with D. Peterson and L. 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 K. Rubinson. The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Publications at UCLA, Los Angeles.

Select Articles:

2023 Monitoring Heritage at Risk: Caucasus Heritage Watch and the Armenian Monuments of Nagorno-Karabakh (with L. Khatchadourian and I. Lindsay). Systemizing the Past, edited by Y. Grekyan and A. Bobokhyan, pp. 428-439. Archaeopress, Oxford.
2022 Unseeing the Past: Archaeology and the Legacy of the Armenian Genocide. Current Anthropology 63(S25):S56-S71.
2022 Civilization Machines: Value and Recognition on the Armenian Highland from the Bronze Age to Today. Scottish Archaeological Journal 44(1): 64-87.
*2020 Bronze Age Metaphysics. In Constructing Kurgans: Burial Mounds and Funerary Customs in the Caucasus, Northwestern Iran, and Eastern Anatolia in the Bronze and Iron Age, edited by N. Laneri, G. Palumbi, and S. M. Celka, pp. 1-20. Studies on the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean, Florence.
*2018 A New Chronological Model for the Bronze and Iron Age Caucasus (with S. Manning, L. Khatchadourian, R. Badalyan, I. Lindsay, A. Greene, and M. Marshall). Antiquity 92(366): 1530-1551.
2017 The Kurgans of Gegharot: A preliminary report on the results of the 2013-14 excavations of Project ArAGATS (with R. Badalyan). Aramazd.
2016 A Preliminary Report on the 2008, 2010, and 2011 Investigations of Project ArAGATS on the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Republic of Armenia (with R. Badalyan, I. Lindsay, L. Khatchadourian, A. Harutyunyan, A. Greene, M. Marshall, B. Monahan, and R. Hovsepyan). Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan 46: 149-222
2015 Objects in Crisis: Curation, Repair, and the Historicity of Things in the South Caucasus (1500-300 BC) (with L. Khatchadourian). In Counternarratives and Macrohistories: New Perspectives on the Archaeology of Complex Societies, edited by G. Emberling, pp. 231-258. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
2015 Wood resource management based on charcoals from the Bronze Age site of Gegharot (central Armenia) (with F. Jude, D. Marguerie, R. Badalyan, and A. Delwaide). Quaternary International.
2014 Divination and Sovereignty: The Late Bronze Age Shrines at Gegharot, Armenia (with J. Leon). American Journal of Archaeology 118: 549-563.
2014 Geophysical Survey at Late Bronze Age Fortresses: Comparing Methods in Diverse Geological Contexts of Northwestern Armenia (with I. Lindsay, J. Leon, and C. Wiktorowicz). Antiquity 88: 578-595
2012 ‘Yerevan, My Ancient Erebuni’: Archaeological Repertoires, Public Assemblages, and the Manufacture of a (Post-)Soviet Nation. In Regimes and Revolutions: Power, Violence, and Labor in Eurasia Between the Ancient and the Modern, edited by C. Hartley, G. B. Yazıcıoğlu, and A. T. Smith. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
2012 The Caucasus and the Near East. In Blackwell Companion to the Archaeology of the Near East, edited by Daniel Potts, pp. 668-686. Blackwell, Oxford.
2012 The Prehistory of an Urartian Landscape. In: Biainili-Urartu edited by S. Kroll, P. Zimansky, U. Hellwag, C. Gruber, M. Roaf, pp. 39-52. Peeters, Leuven.
2011 Archaeologies of Sovereignty. Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 415-432.
2010 Project ArAGATS: 10 Years of Investigations into Bronze and Iron Age Sites in the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Republic of Armenia (with R. Badalyan and L. Khatchadourian). TÜBA-AR: The Turkish Academy of Sciences Journal of Archaeology 13: 263-276.
2010 Magnetic Survey in the Investigation of Sociopolitical Change at a Late Bronze Age Fortress Settlement in Northwestern Armenia (with I. Lindsay and R. Badalyan). Archaeological Prospection 17:15-27.
2008 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 Mitteilungen aus Iran und Turan 40:45-105.
2006 A History of Archaeological Practices in the Republic of Armenia (with I. Lindsay). Journal of Field Archaeology 31(2):165-184.
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.
2006 Before Argishti: The Roots of Complex Societies in Caucasia, Notes from the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia. In Beyond the Steppe and the Sown: Proceedings of the 2002 University of Chicago Conference on Eurasian Archaeology, edited by D. Peterson, L. Popova and A. T. Smith. Colloquia Pontica Series. Brill, Leiden.
2005 Prometheus Unbound: Southern Caucasia in Prehistory. Journal of World Prehistory 19(4): 229-279.
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 R. Badalyan, P. Avetisyan, and M. Zardaryan). American Journal of Archaeology 108(1): 1-41.
2003 The Emergence of Socio-Political Complexity in Southern Caucasia (with R. Badalyan and P. Avetisyan). In Archaeology in the Borderlands: Investigations in Caucasia and Beyond, edited by A. T. Smith and K. S. Rubinson. Cotsen Institute Publications, 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 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.

Adam T. Smith

Overview

Research Focus

Awards and Honors

Professional Experience

Publications

In the news

Courses - Fall 2025

Courses - Spring 2026

Adam T. Smith

Henry Scarborough Professor of Social Science

Overview

Research Focus

Awards and Honors

Professional Experience

Publications

In the news

Courses - Fall 2025

Courses - Spring 2026