Amy Schott
About Amy Schott
My work uses geoarchaeological approaches to answer questions about landscape evolution and long-term human-environment relationships. I am interested in understanding how people adapt to dynamic landscape environments, including how a changing landscape affects human societies, as well as how people alter their physical landscape. I am especially interested in prehistoric agriculture and land use in the Southwest US/Northwest Mexico.
My dissertation research is on the Southern Colorado Plateau in Northeastern Arizona, where I am looking at the relationship between Ancestral Pueblo agricultural groups and settlement patterns within an eolian landscape. I am using soil geomorphology, geochronology, micromorphology, soil chemistry, and spatial analyses to understand the quality of eolian soils for agriculture, site formation processes in a dynamic eolian environment, and the long-term use of a marginal landscape by successful agriculturists.
My previous research included work at La Playa archaeology site in Sonora, Mexico, to understand the site formation processes of an early agricultural site on a fine-grained alluvial floodplain.
Selected Publications
Schott, Amy M. 2017. "Site Formation Processes and Depositional Environments of a Fine-Grained Alluvial Floodplain at La Playa Archaeology Site, Sonora, Mexico." In Geoarchaeology, 32, 283-301.
Schott, Amy M. 2016. "Jack Stauder. The Blue and the Green: A Cultural Ecological History of an Arizona Ranching Community." In Human Ecology, 44:5, 645-646.
Areas of Study
US Southwest, Northwest Mexico
Research Interests
geoarchaeology, human-environment interaction, landscape evolution, soil geomorphology, prehistoric agriculture, site formation processes
Contact Information
Degree(s)
Graduate Certificate in Geographic Information Systems, University of Arizona, 2016
M.A., Anthropology, University of Arizona, 2012
B.S., Archaeological Studies and Spanish, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, 2009