The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain awarded him the Wellcome Medal for a work in applied anthropology in 1944 and the Rivers Medal for field work in 1945. He delivered the Munro Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1949, the Josiah Mason Lectures at the University of Birmingham in 1953, and the Marett Memorial Lecture at Oxford in 1961. The University of Melbourne awarded two of his books (Transformation Scene and Social Change) the Harbison-Higinbotham Prize.