author
Robert Harry Lowie
1883–1957
A pioneer of American anthropology, he helped shape how scholars studied Indigenous societies in North America. His writing is known for detailed fieldwork, especially on the Crow, and for making big questions about culture and social organization feel grounded in real communities.
2 Audiobooks
Societies of the Kiowas
by Robert Harry Lowie
Culture & Ethnology
by Robert Harry Lowie
About the author
Born in Vienna in 1883 and brought to New York as a child, Robert Harry Lowie became one of the leading anthropologists of his generation. He studied under Franz Boas and went on to build a long career in American anthropology, combining close ethnographic research with broad thinking about culture and society.
Lowie is especially remembered for his work on Indigenous peoples of North America, including major studies of the Crow. Britannica notes that his research on the Plains Indians was particularly important, and his books Culture and Ethnology (1917), Primitive Society (1920), and The History of Ethnological Theory (1937) helped influence anthropological debate for decades.
He died in Berkeley, California, in 1957. Today, he is still regarded as a key figure in the development of modern anthropology, both for the richness of his fieldwork and for the way he connected detailed observation with larger questions about how human societies are organized.