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Join us for our Winter Party and Silent Auction on January 11th, 1:00 pm at the San Pedro Chapel

 

 

AAHS History

Otis Chichester, Watson Smith, Julian Hayden, Emil Haury, Clara Lee Tanner 1st class of AAHS Awardees

Articles from the 100th Anniversary Year (2016)

In 2016 AAHS celebrated 100 years. To mark the occasion David Wilcox and Raymond Thompson both contributed articles detailing aspects of this history to our monthly newsletter, Glyphs. The early history of AAHS is closely tied to that of the Arizona State Museum and the personality of Byron Cummings. The published copies of Glyphs can be found on under our Publications page.

David R. Wilcox is a native upstate New Yorker who completed a B.A. in anthropology at Beloit College in 1966.  He came to Arizona in the summer of 1969, finishing his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Arizona in 1977. During that time, he was the graduate student representative of the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, and he led a study of the site of Tumamoc Hill, published in Kiva (1979, whole issue). Dr. Wilcox worked at the Arizona State Museum from 1980 to 1983, and after a time as an Itinerant Scholar, he went to the Museum of Northern Arizona in August 1984, becoming head of its anthropology department in January 1988 (to 2006) and retiring in 2010. He then again was an Itinerant Scholar, and a Research Associate at the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona. 

Dr. Wilcox conducted extensive research in many areas of Southwestern Archaeology on the history of Southwest archaeology. His longest standing research program was compiling a documentary story of the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition led by Frank Hamilton Cushing; this project began in 1983, with a wonderful collaboration with Dr. Curtis M. Hinsley Jr. 

 Wilcox received the 2007 Byron Cummings Award from the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society and the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arizona Governor’s Archaeological Advisory Commission. He passed away on May 27, 2022.

As background research for his articles, Wilcox compiled multiple data files in his general study of antiquarianism in Arizona, with special attention to the history of the Arizona Antiquarian Association, the Hohokam Museums Association, and AAHS. These data files include tables of membership lists and endnotes with biographical sketches for these organizations. To view these files click here.

50th Anniversary Issue of Kiva

Golden Anniversary Issue of Kiva (1966)

Arch & Hist Ancestors – Raymond Thompson

Raymond Thompson is Professor Emeritus in the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona.  He served as head of the Department of Anthropology from 1964 to 1980 and director of the Arizona State Museum from 1964 to 1997.    He came to the University of Arizona in 1956 when Emil Haury offered him a faculty position. 

Thompson guided the highly ranked anthropology program through a period of booming growth in higher education, during which time the department ballooned from 14 to 40 faculty members. In 1980, when the Anthropology Department and museum split into separate units, Thompson stepped down as department head, but remained museum director until 1997, when he officially retired at age 73.