Join us for this Archaeology Abridged talk by Monica Smith.

Today, Indian cuisine is a global favorite, anchored through a diaspora of restaurants in small towns and urban centers alike. But did you know that a hankering for the flavors of the subcontinent goes back thousands of years? The Romans imported pepper from India by the sackful, and even earlier than that, the ancient Bronze Age culture of the Indus started the combinations of ginger, turmeric, and other spices that we recognize as “curry.” Bring your appetite for a lunchtime discussion of the ingredients, history, and archaeology of the subcontinent’s wonderful palette of foods.

Monica L. Smith is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. She holds the Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies and is the director of the South Asian Archaeology Laboratory at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. She received her B.A. in Classical Civilizations (ancient Rome and Greece) at the University of California, Santa Barbara; M.A. in Archaeology from UCLA; and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her field experience includes participation on projects in England, India, Italy, Egypt, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Tunisia, and with the National Park Service in the American Southwest. With her colleague R.K. Mohanty she has co-directed a long-running archaeological research project in eastern India at the sites of Sisupalgarh, Talapada and Ostapur and their environs, supported by funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. Her books include Cities: The First 6,000 Years; A Prehistory of Ordinary People; and with R.K. Mohanty, Excavations at Sisupalgarh. She is in her third term as an Academic Trustee on the AIA’s Governing Board.