David R. Harris died on 25 December 2013. An eminent and respected geographer, anthropologist and archaeologist, his 50-year career of innovative research uncovered the complexities of the origins of agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals.
Service to the Society
Harris was a long-serving Fellow of the Society and was presented with the Back Award in 1972 for ‘Contributions to Biogeography, especially of Middle America’.
Academic career
Reading geography at the University of Oxford, Harris was subsequently awarded a King George VI Memorial Fellowship to study in the USA, conducting his PhD research at the University of California, Berkeley with cultural geographer Carl Sauer.
Harris joined UCL’s Department of Geography in 1964 as a Reader, moving to their Institute of Archaeology in 1980 as Professor of Human Environment. He succeeded as Director of the Institute in 1989 until his retirement in 1996.
As a colleague noted: “David Harris, through both his teaching and his publications, inspired the development of research into agricultural origins and plant domestication on a truly global and comparative scale. The development of tropical archaeobotany in particular has derived continued inspiration from his work.”