Many archaeologists will spend a lifetime getting to grips with the complexities of just one ancient civilisation. That leaves few to explore the bigger patterns of human history. Often the grand comparative investigations and syntheses are attempted by writers coming to archaeology from other fields, with a risk that they may not fully appreciate the limits as well as the depth and complexity of the evidence.
This does not go for the work by Michael E Smith. He has dedicated a full career to the archaeology of Aztec cities in Mexico, from long-term fieldwork to careful analyses and academic syntheses. Yet he is also guided by the belief that archaeological knowledge has to be properly compared to make sense – and that it is still too rarely done. Both perspectives are evident in his new book Urban Life in the Distant Past, which he is not afraid to call the culmination of his career. It is certainly a seminal new statement on the way we look at ancient cities, and how we may link their archaeology with urbanism today.
We followed the book in the making, from idea to manuscript, when Smith was a visiting professor at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions at Aarhus University, Denmark, a few years ago. He used this stay as an opportunity to gather evidence from experts working on urban sites, who were just as familiar with other ancient peoples as Mike is ‘at home with the Aztecs’ (the title of another book of his). Working his way systematically from office to office at the Centre, he picked the brains of junior and senior researchers alike, testing case studies of urban societies in the ancient Mediterranean, the Near East, medieval Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia – on many of which the Centre’s members have conducted decade-long fieldwork and published extensively.
