author
Robert Harry Lowie
1883–1957
An Austrian-born American anthropologist, he became one of the important early scholars of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially the Plains nations. His fieldwork on the Crow and his clear, influential books helped shape modern anthropology in the United States.
2 Audiobooks
Societies of the Kiowas
by Robert Harry Lowie
Culture & Ethnology
by Robert Harry Lowie
About the author
Born in Vienna on June 12, 1883, he moved to New York as a child and later studied at Columbia under Franz Boas, one of the central figures in American anthropology. Lowie went on to build a major academic career in the field, working first with the American Museum of Natural History and later teaching for many years at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is best known for his research on Indigenous peoples of North America, especially the Crow, and for wider studies of Plains societies. Alongside his fieldwork, he wrote influential books including Culture and Ethnology, Primitive Society, and Social Organization, works that helped define how anthropology was taught and debated in the early twentieth century.
Lowie died in Berkeley, California, on September 21, 1957. He is remembered as a careful researcher and a key figure in the development of modern anthropology, particularly for combining detailed ethnographic study with broad questions about social life and culture.