My web site:
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/stsmith/

Department’s site for me: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/Stsmith/Stsmith.php

Professor Smith’s research centers on the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Nubia. He is particularly interested in the identification of ethnicity in the archaeological record and the ethnic dynamics of colonial encounters. The origins of the Napatan state, whose rulers conquered Egypt, becoming Pharaohs of the 25th Dynasty, provides the focus of his current archaeological research. He has published on the dynamics of Egyptian imperialism and royal ideology, the use of sealings in administration, death and burial in ancient Egypt and Nubia, and the ethnic, social and economic dynamics of interaction between ancient Egypt and Nubia.  Smith’s material specialization lies in ceramic analysis, including the chemical characterization of absorbed residues. He is also an active field archaeologist, having participated in and led archeological expeditions to Egypt, including the Luxor’s Theban Necropolis, and since 1997 to Sudanese Nubia, where he directs two projects, one at third cataract of the Nile in the New Kingdom and Napatan cemetery of Tombos, discovering pyramids of the Egyptian and Nubian elite, and the second at the fourth cataract, where he is contributing to the Merowe Dam Salvage Project in a joint project with Prof. Brenda Baker of Arizona State University. In 1993, he took a break from the academic world and became the Egyptological Consultant on the hit MGM movie ‘Stargate,’ giving advice on the script, sets and costumes, and recreating spoken ancient Egyptian for about half the movie’s dialog. He renewed his Hollywood connection in 1998 by consulting on the script and reconstructing spoken ancient Egyptian for another hit movie, the recent Universal remake of ‘The Mummy,’ continuing this work in 2000 with the sequel ‘The Mummy Returns.’

British Museum, 2006 Kirwan Memorial Lecture.  The Kirwan Memorial Lecture was inaugurated in 2000 in honor of the First President of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society, Sir Laurence Kirwan (1907-1999), whose interest and involvement in Sudanese archaeology spanned over 60 years. Speakers to date have included a number of senior scholars whose work has made significant contributions to Nubian archaeology. 

Participant in the UCSB Center for Middle East Studies Fulbright Hays Teacher Training Program (http://www.cmes.ucsb.edu/outreach.html)

Valley of the Kings, with Nancy Barnard. Oxford University Press, 2003. A book for young adults.

• Wretched Kush: Ethnic Identities and Boundaries in Egypt's Nubian Empire, Routlage London 2003
• Askut in Nubia: The Economics and Ideology of Egyptian Imperialism in the Second Millennium BC. Kegan Paul 1995
• In Anthropology and Egyptology, Judy Lustig, ed., State and Empire in the Middle and New Kingdoms. Sheffield 1999
• In Studies in Culture Contact, James Cusick, ed., Nubia and Egypt: Interaction, Acculturation, and Secondary State Formation from the Third to First Millennium BC. Center of Archaeological Investigations 1998.
• In Box Office Archaeology, Julie M. Schablitsky, ed., Unwrapping The Mummy: Hollywood Fantasies, Egyptian Realities Left Coast Press

Center for Middle East Studies
Archaeology RFG
Borderlands RFG
African Studies RFG
Department of Religious Studies (0% affiliation)