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Karl W. Butzer

Karl W. Butzer (August 19, 1934 – May 4, 2016) was a German-born American geographer. Butzer’s research focused on the relationships between the environment and prehistoric people or more recent societies. In collaboration with a wide range of paleoanthropologists and archaeologists, he worked at both larger, regional scales and at the site-specific micro-level. Butzer engaged with an interdisciplinary environmental history, critical of the recent turn to a simplistic environmental determinism, and concerned about the prospects of global warming.

 

Elisabeth K. Butzer

Karl’s co-author on various publications and long-term collaborator. She has published a micro-study of human ecology: Historia social de una comunidad tlaxcalteca (Saltillo, Mexico, 2001). This book reflects Elisabeth’s experience as a specialist in Medieval archives and anthropology, with extended research in Spain. Currently, she is a Research Fellow in the Department of Geography and the Environment, at the University of Texas, Austin.

Follow Karl Butzer on Academia.edu