Research and Teaching Interests

Hunter-gatherer archaeology, lithic technology, spatial analysis, Neanderthals, archaic and modern humans, Paleolithic Europe, Middle and Late Stone Age in North Africa.

Amy Clark’s research focuses on the evolution and emergence of modern humans and closely related hominins, such as Neanderthals. She is particularly interested in using the archaeological record to understand the evolution of traits that are particularly well-developed in our species, such as cumulative culture and hyper social behavior. In so doing, she explores the relationships between humans and physical spaces, such as the home. Her research also focuses on the structure and size of human populations and how they were configured on the landscape. She uses the spatial structure of living spaces to obtain information on group size, social relationships, and mobility patterns and to study changes in the way humans structured space over time. She currently has an active fieldwork project in Morocco near the city of Essaouira on the Atlantic coast.

Amy received her PhD from the University of Arizona in 2015. Since then, she has held several positions including as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Toulouse, France (supported by the Fyssen Foundation), a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oklahoma, and taught within the Department of Anthropology at Harvard as a College Fellow before becoming an Assistant Professor in 2023.