Alexia Smith

Alexia Smith, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Connecticut, specializes in archaeology, ancient plant and food use, and the ways in which people have adapted to their environment throughout the world in antiquity. She earned her PhD in archaeology from Boston University and teaches courses on archaeological discoveries across the globe, ancient plant use in antiquity, ecological anthropology, and early civilizations. She regularly teaches a course entitled, “Great Discoveries in Archaeology” that covers early humans, migrations across the globe, and peoples of the past including the Vikings of Nordic Europe; the Inca, Maya, Aztec of the Americas; and early state level societies spanning Asia and Africa. 

She heads an archaeobotany laboratory at the University of Connecticut and has worked on multiple excavations in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Armenia. She has also conducted agricultural research in Malaysia and studied local landforms and cultural histories of Scandinavia and Iceland. Her research focuses specifically on early agriculture and how people adapted to climate change in the past, but more recently, she has become fascinated with the cultural history of food.

Alexia has published numerous articles in prominent journals, received funding from the National Science Foundation to further her research and teaching, and has received university awards for her teaching and advising. She has lived in the UK as well as Austria and Spain, where she taught English.

Language spoken: English