Smith is Co-Director of the Proyecto Arqueológico Machaca-Desaguadero (PAMD) with Adolfo Pérez and Maribel Pérez. Our project investigates the long-term relationships and entanglements between humans and the Desaguadero River, located in the Bolivian Andes. Drawing on archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic research, our team has explored the political ecology of this waterscape since 2001. Our central focus has been to understand the dynamic relationship between people and the riverine environment and how this relationship changed over time, refracting the different centralized polities that sought to exert control over the region, from the city-state of Tiwanaku, to the expansive Inka empire, and the Spanish colonial state, through to the contemporary Plurinational State of Bolivia.

The center of our collaborative investigations has been the community of Iruhito. Located in the canton of Jesús de Machaca, Iruhito is one of four remaining communities of Urus or Qhas shoni (people of the water). For over two millennia this community has lived with the water, fishing, hunting waterfowl, and harvesting totora reeds. They have also played important roles in the political expansion of different states over this period of time, at times as a key ally and at other times as a fierce force of resistance.