The University of Arizona Press

Monica L. Smith is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds the Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies and is the director of the South Asian Archaeology Laboratory at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Her archaeological field experience includes work in England, Italy, Egypt, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Turkey, and the American Southwest. With her colleague R.K. Mohanty she has co-directed a long-running archaeological research project in eastern India at the sites of Sisupalgarh, Talapada and Ostapur and their environs, supported by funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. She is the author of The Prehistory of Ordinary People (2010) and Cities: The First 6,000 Years (2019), the co-author (with R.K. Mohanty) of Excavations at Sisupalgarh (2008), and the editor of The Social Construction of Ancient Cities (2003) and Abundance: The Archaeology of Plenitude (2017).