Karl Butzer

Karl Wilhelm Butzer ( born August 19, 1934 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ) is a German-born American geographer and archaeologist.

Life

Butzer was born in 1934 in the Rhineland. His Catholic family left Nazi Germany. This was followed by emigration years in England and Canada, where the family did not come to rest. He is the brother of Paul Butzer.

Butzer received his master's degree at McGill University in Canada in meteorology and returned in the 1950s, returned to Germany to do his doctorate at the University of Bonn in physical geography.

From 1959 to 1966 he taught at the University of Wisconsin and 1981/ 82 during a guest semester at the ETH Zurich. Until 1984, Butzer was a lecturer at the University of Chicago. His wide range of geoarchaeological research extend to Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa, the USA and Spain, in time, ranging from the Palaeolithic to historically busy time. It deals with global climate and environmental change, the reconstruction of landscapes, Geoarchaeology, the human adaptation to changing environmental conditions (cultural adaptation) and Synkretismuserscheinungen in religions.

Butzer 1985 was appointed to the University of Texas at Austin. From this time he began research in northern Mexico, where his interests include Spanish influence.

Butzer has won several awards for his scientific achievements ( Busk Medal of the Royal Geographical Society; Fryxell Medal of the Society of American Archaeology, 1986: Archaeological Geology Award, 2002: Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award ). He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Butzer laid for archeology before groundbreaking interdisciplinary work that advanced the aspects of environment and ecology in the foreground. He coined so that the American "environmental archeology", while his work is little known in Germany.

Publications

  • Archaeology as Human Ecology, Cambridge 1982
  • Cattle and Sheep from Old to New Spain: Historical Antecedents. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 78, 1988, pp. 29-56
  • Environment and Archaeology. An Ecological Approach to Prehistory ( 1st edition 1964)
  • The Classical Tradition of Agronomic Science. Perspectives on Carolingian Agriculture and Agronomy. In: Paul Leo Butzer, Dietrich Lohrmann (ed. ): Science in Western and Eastern Civilization in Carolingian Times, Birkhäuser, Basel Boston Berlin 1993, pp. 539-596

Tributes

  • Karl H. Open: Dr. Karl W. Butzer: Recipient of 2002 Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award. Journal of Latin American Geography 2.1, 2003, pp. 125-127 (with Project MUSE :)
  • Geoarchäologe
  • Geograph ( 20th century)
  • Environmental historians
  • University teachers ( University of Chicago)
  • University teachers (Madison, Wisconsin)
  • Emigrant from the German Empire at the time of National Socialism
  • Guggenheim Fellow
  • Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
  • Americans
  • Born in 1934
  • Man
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