Unknown author · Public domain

An anthropologist who built cultural materialism by fusing Marx's emphasis on production with Malthus's demographic insights, arguing that a society's economic and reproductive base shapes its social structure and culture more than ideas alone do. His 1968 book The Rise of Anthropological Theory reoriented the field toward cultural ecology, and his later popular books carried the argument to a wide lay readership; he remained a combative presence at academic conferences into his final years.