Scott Ortman

About

Scott Ortman is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is an archaeologist whose research focuses on demography and settlement patterns in the US Southwest. Ortman approaches human development from an anthropological perspective, integrating complex systems theory to better understand the dynamics of human societies. His work contributes to the broader understanding of how human settlements evolve and interact over time, particularly in the context of the American Southwest.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Geography
• Economic geography
• Civil engineering
• Economics
• Regional science
• Engineering
• Social Science
• Computer Science
• Demography

Selected publications

• Cities: Complexity, theory and history

  PLoS ONE · 2020 · 97 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  In recent decades researchers in a variety of disciplines have developed a new "urban science," the central goal of which is to build general theory regarding the social processes underlying urbanization. Much work in urban science is animated by the notion that cities are complex systems. What does it mean to make this claim? Here we adopt the view that complex systems entail both variation and structure, and that their properties vary with system size and with respect to where and how they are…

  DOI

• Urban Science: Integrated Theory from the First Cities to Sustainable Metropolises

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 54 citations

  DOI

• The Low-Density Urban Systems of the Classic Period Maya and Izapa: Insights from Settlement Scaling Theory

  Latin American Antiquity · 2020 · 42 citations

  The peoples of southern Mesoamerica, including the Classic period Maya, are often claimed to exhibit a distinct type of spatial organization relative to contemporary urban systems. Here, we use the settlement scaling framework and properties of settlements recorded in systematic, full-coverage surveys to examine ways in which southern Mesoamerican settlement systems were both similar to and different from contemporary systems. We find that the population-area relationship in these settlements di…

  DOI

• Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-04-14 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access

  Long-entrenched grand narratives have tied inequality in large human aggregations to generally linear trends, a direct outcome of domestication, then fostered by population growth and/or stepped scalar transitions in the hierarchical complexity of human institutions. This general pattern has been argued to short-circuit or reverse only in the context of cataclysmic disasters or societal breakdowns. Yet, for the most part, these universal deterministic frameworks have been constructed from histor…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Global Dynamics of Inequality (GINI) project: analysing archaeological housing data

  Antiquity · 2023-12-18 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The GINI project investigates the dynamics of inequality among populations over the long term by synthesising global archaeological housing data. This project brings archaeologists together from around the world to assess hypotheses concerning the causes and consequences of inequality that are of relevance to contemporary societies globally.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Incorporation and Culture Change as the Result of Culture Contact

  NSF · $299k · 2017–2020

• The Creation and Division of Wealth and the Long-term Consequences of Inequality

  NSF · $199k · 2021–2024

• Collaborative Research: HNDS-R: Human Networks, Sustainable Development, and Lived Experience in a Nonindustrial Society

  NSF · $218k · 2023–2025

Frequent coauthors

• Timothy A. Kohler

  Washington State University

  44 shared

• José Lobo

  34 shared

• Luís M. A. Bettencourt

  University of Chicago

  28 shared

• Michael E. Smith

  15 shared

• Mark D. Varien

  13 shared

• Donna M. Glowacki

  University of Notre Dame

  13 shared

• John Hanson

  11 shared

• Kaitlyn E. Davis

  Heritage Preservation

  10 shared

Labs

• The Social Reactors ProjectPI

  Human settlements and networks in history

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy, Anthropology

  Arizona State University

  2010

• Master of Arts, Anthropology

  Arizona State University

  1998

• Bachelor of Arts, Anthropology

  Stanford University

  1994

Similar researchers at University of Colorado Boulder

• Matt Sponheimerh-70
• Michelle Sautherh-35
• Sharon DeWitteh-34