Ask the Author: Monica L. Smith
Answered Questions (5)
Monica L. Smith
Words are the most powerful human invention. While objects can be in limited supply, ideas carried by words can spread far and wide. We all have at least one language that we were born into and that we can speak and write clearly and that can channel our thoughts. Sometimes that is channeled just to ourselves in a journal or as a series of notes, and sometimes they are broadcast to the world. With the internet, any of us can reach a global audience to observe, celebrate, and persuade others.
Monica L. Smith
Sometimes a big blank page is a bit much. Try writing on little scraps of paper, or on the notepad on your phone, or scribble a thought on the back of an envelope.
Monica L. Smith
As an archaeologist, I always have plenty to work on. Every time I work on a site with my colleagues, we have a team that takes on a number of new questions simultaneously as we dig a site: what did people eat (and how does that reflect the human use of the environment); what was the impact of the climate and weather (and how does that affect the seasonality of human activities); what kinds of objects did they make and use (and how does that show their individuality, their personality, their joys in life?). And sometimes we get new questions after the fieldwork, so we dig into the databases and archives of our research to answer those questions, too.
Monica L. Smith
It's more like, "how can I not be writing?"!
Monica L. Smith
I've been living in cities, and working on archaeological sites, for a long time. Gradually the two things came together -- almost without me realizing it -- and then I recognized how nice it was to work on a topic that I also felt like I embodied in my daily life. So that's how the book Cities: The First 6,000 Years was born.
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