Scott G. Ortman (Ph.D. Arizona State University, 2010) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He was a long-time employee and former intern at Crow Canyon. He also served as a senior researcher on the Village Ecodynamics Project, a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration that investigates long-term human-environment interactions in the U.S. Southwest. Prior to joining the University of Colorado at Boulder, Scott was Director of Research at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, and an Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. He continues to work with Crow Canyon on a variety of research projects.

Scott’s research focuses on historical anthropology with a focus on the causes and consequences of major transitions in societies. He has investigated Tewa Pueblo origins in the northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico; community organization in the Mesa Verde region of Colorado; and more recently, an examination of social complexity in a global context. In collaboration with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, the University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Natural History, and the Santa Fe Institute, Scott is pursuing research pertaining to the Neolithic Revolution in the U.S. Southwest, the emergence of towns in the Tewa Basin, and complex systems approaches to human societies.