Dr. Michael E. Smith is an archaeologist at Arizona State University with two research foci: Excavation of houses at Aztec sites, and the transdisciplinary study of premodern cities in relation to contemporary urbanization. His book, At Home with the Aztecs (2016) won the Best Popular Book award, Society for American Archaeology; his latest book is Urban Life in the Distant Past: The Prehistory of Energized Crowding (2023, Cambridge University Press).