Dr. George S. Smith is an archaeologist and has taught Public Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management at FSU a number of times starting in 1993. He was Associate Director at the Southeast Archeological Center, worked for the Archeological Assistance Division of the National Park Service, was a Research Associate in Archaeology and Curator of Archaeology (Acting) at the University of Alaska Museum, and was an archaeologist with the Cooperative Park Studies Unit, Anthropology and Historic Preservation at the University of Alaska. He has served on various committees of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). These include the Save the Past for the Future Steering Committee, the Public Education Committee (PEC), and the PEC sub-committee on Public Sessions that organized the first two "Archaeology for the Public" sessions at the SAA national meetings (chair). He was co-organizer of a workshop dealing with Teaching Archaeology in the 21st Century. He co-chaired the SAAfs Task Force on Curriculum which received an NSF grant to enhance the undergraduate archaeology curriculum to include stewardship, diverse pasts, social relevance, ethics and values, written and oral communication, fundamental archaeological skills, and real world problem-solving outlined in the Teaching Archaeology in the 21st Century workshop. He served on the Executive Boards of both the SAA and the Florida Archaeological Council. He served on the World Bank Expert Panel which was convened to help review the World Bank's policy for Management of Cultural Property in Bank-financed projects.
He has worked with universities in the United States, Europe, and China with respect to archaeology in higher education. He worked with a consortium through Indiana University to provide cultural heritage management training in Kyrgyzstan. He organized a workshop held in association with the World Archaeological Congress meetings entitled Working Together: Archaeology in Global Perspective. As a follow up to that workshop he co-organized two international workshops: Preserving the World's Cultural Heritage: Public Policy and Heritage Resource Management; and Heritage Values in Contemporary Society. He helped organized a workshop in China entitled Heritage Values in China: Identifying, Evaluating and Treating Impacts to Cultural Relics and has recently been appointed to the Editorial Board for the journal Heritage Management now Heritage and Society. He had a Fulbright Specialists Program grant to the University of Leiden to lecture on Heritage Values and Cultural Heritage Management. He is a member of US/ICOMOS serving as an expert member on the International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management and is an associate scholar with the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage: Theory, Practice, Policy, and Ethics project at Simon Fraser University. He is an advisor to the Humanities and Creative Arts Panel of the Australian Research Councilfs College of Experts and co-editor for the Cultural Heritage Management section of the Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology that will be published in the Fall of 2013. As of Summer 2013, he has acquired Honorary Doctorate from the University of Alaska.
- United States International Council on Monuments and Sites
- International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management, Expert Member
- Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage Project, Associate Scholar
- Fulbright Specialist Program Scholar
- Courtesy Professor, Department of Anthropology, Florida State University
- International Advisor for the Australian Research Council.
- Editorial Board Journal Heritage and Society
- Co-editor for the Cultural Heritage Management section of the Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology
Publications:
- Yu, Pei-Lin Y, Chen Shen, and George S. Smith (eds.) In Progress. Relevance and Application of Heritage in the Modern World. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.
- Messenger, Phyllis Mauch and George S. Smith (eds.) 2010 Cultural Heritage Management: A Global Perspective. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
- Smith, George S., Phyllis Mauch. Messenger, and Hilary A. Soderland (eds.) 2010 Heritage Values in Contemporary Society. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.
- Bender, Susan J. and George S. Smith (eds.) 2000 Teaching Archaeology in the 21st Century. Special Report, Society for American Archaeology. Washington DC.
- Smith, George S. and John E. Ehrenhard (eds.) 1991 Protecting the Past. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida