Department
I am deputy director of Brown University's museum of anthropology, which puts me in charge of daily operations, a small staff, excellent students, diverse and research-ready collections, exhibition development, and more.
I am also currently a co-PI on the NSF-funded Arctic Horizons project, examining priorities and goals for US social science research and funding in the North over the next decade.
Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology
OrganizationBrown University
Emailkevin_p_smith@brown.edu
Phone401-863-5700
AddressBrown University
Bristol , Rhode Island 02860United StatesBioI am an archaeologist interested in complex societies, state formation, and the integration of domestic and political economies. My research has focused, for the past 30 years, on Iceland and the North Atlantic, where I is interested in understanding the dynamic processes that led to the creation of a short-lived independent Icelandic state and its rapid absorption into the expanding Norwegian state. I have also been working on an archaeologies of law, fear, and ritual landscapes. At various points in the past, I have also worked on, and published on, Paleoindians, complex hunter-gatherer societies, ritual, and issues of scale and perception in the archaeological record.I am deputy director of Brown University's museum of anthropology, which puts me in charge of daily operations, a small staff, excellent students, diverse and research-ready collections, exhibition development, and more.
Interests
Social Science, Interdisciplinary Research, Indigenous KnowledgeScience Specialties
Archaeology, Social Science/Humanities/Natural Science interface, North Atlantic, archaeological materials analysisCurrent Research
Colonization, settlement, land-use, and political change in the North Atlantic. My primary research focuses on Iceland, preferring a long-term perspective on change spanning the 9th-19th centuries, rather than an exclusive focus on one period or analytical specialization. Current and active research on the use and interpretation of a Viking Age ritual site within one of Iceland's longest lava caves, on geochemical analyses of Icelandic opals and jaspers, and on the geochemical analysis of pigments used on Icelandic medieval illuminated manuscripts are all parts of a longer-term focus on materiality, mobility, and socio-political change in western Iceland and the North Atlantic.I am also currently a co-PI on the NSF-funded Arctic Horizons project, examining priorities and goals for US social science research and funding in the North over the next decade.