Claire Smith (archaeologist)

Education and career

Smith obtained a bachelor's degree in archaeology from the University of New England in 1990, and a PhD from the same university in 1996. Her doctoral thesis was an ethnoarchaeological study of Australian Aboriginal art. She also wrote a book called, "Decolonizing Indigenous Archaeology." After that she held an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship.

With her husband, Gary Jackson, Smith has conducted long term field research in the Aboriginal community of Barunga. She has brought Aboriginal students to train in Adelaide, created archaeological field schools for Aboriginal students, and has been a major contributor to the development of Indigenous Archaeology, both in Australia and elsewhere in the world.

Her tenure at the helm of World Archaeological Congress included creation of a scholarly journal for the organization, Archaeologies, as well as outreach programs such as Archaeologists without Borders and the Global Libraries Project.

Her scholarly output has largely focused on the relationship between archaeologists and indigenous communities, both in Australia and around the world. She has also given attention to general interests for teaching archaeology, such as her Archaeology to Delight and Instruct, and practicing it, such as Digging It Up Down Under. Her archaeological field methods textbook for introductory students has gone through two editions in Australia and was published in an American edition. Her interest in bringing heritage and community archaeology issues to public attention, particularly the plight of Aboriginal peoples in Australia, has led to a series of articles in the Australian news source The Conversation on these topics.

Smith is a member of the editorial advisory board of the archaeology journal Antiquity.