David R. Harris

David Russell Harris, FSA, FBA (14 December 1930 – 25 December 2013) was a British geographer, anthropologist, archaeologist and academic, well known for his detailed work on the origins of agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals. He was a director of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, and retained a position as Professor Emeritus of the Human Environment at the Institute.

Harris was born on 14 December 1930 in London, England. As an undergraduate Harris attended University College, Oxford, first obtaining a BA in Geography. Continuing with postgraduate studies at Oxford, in 1955 Harris was awarded an M.Litt. in Geography with a thesis entitled "Water resources and land use in Tunisia". In 1963, he was awarded a PhD from the Geography Department at University of California, Berkeley, upon defending his dissertation entitled "Plants, animals, and man in the Outer Leeward Islands, West Indies. An ecological study of Antigua, Barbuda, and Anguilla".

Harris served in the Royal Air Force from 1949 to 1950 as part of National Service.

Between 1958 and 1964, Harris lectured in geography at Queen Mary College, University of London. During the 1962–63 academic year he was a visiting lecturer at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, in addition to pursuing a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley.

...
Wikipedia