| Monica L. Smith | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Titles: | Professor and Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles |
| Alma Mater: | University of Michigan |
| Discipline: | Archaeologist |
| Main Interests: | Ancient cities and their household activities |
Monica Louise Smith is an American archaeologist, anthropologist, and historian of ancient cities and their household activities. She is Professor and Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Smith graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in classical civilization from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1985. She earned a master's degree in archaeology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1988 and completed her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Michigan in 1997.
After postdoctoral work at the University of Arizona, Southern Methodist University, and the Smithsonian Institution, she became an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh in 2000. She returned to the University of California, Los Angeles as a faculty member in 2002.
In 2016, Smith along with geographer Thomas Gillespie researched potential sites for Edicts of Ashoka. The edicts are evidence of early political regimes, urbanism, and the spread of Buddhism within the Indian subcontinent. The team used a computer model to extrapolate 121 possible sites, mostly in the Deccan Plateau, Afghanistan-Pakistan border, North West India, based on similarities, such as geological and population data, to existing sites. The paper was published in the Current Science scientific journal.[1] [2]
Smith is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the archaeology journal Antiquity.[3]
Smith is the author of books including:
Her edited volumes include: