Home > Carnegie Center > Arizona Women's Hall of Fame > Inductees > Bartlett, Katharine
Katharine Bartlett
1907 - 2001
Inducted in 2008
Used by permission from the Museum of Northern Arizona
Katharine Bartlett was involved with the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA)
for sixty years and helped shape it into an internationally recognized
museum and research center. She began working at the newly created Museum
in 1930 after completing her Masters Degree in Anthropology. She served
as the Curator for Anthropology from 1930 to 1953, during a time when women
in archaeological professions were relatively rare, then as the Curator
of Books and Records from 1953-1975. She established cataloging and preservation
guidelines and techniques for the archeological and ethnological specimens
being accessioned into the fast growing MNA collections. Her guidelines
became a model for others in the state with similar materials. Her breadth
of knowledge included diverse are as such as archeology, Hopi and Navajo
ethnology, the history of Spanish exploration in the Southwest, and Native
American craft arts. She published over 50 articles between 1928 and 1981
and became a major contributor to the literature on Arizona’s native
Americans, past and present.
Another enduring contribution was her systematic work with MNA Director
Harold Colton on the archeological site survey that documented all site
locations by assigning numbers to each site and collecting archeological
items that were later catalogued into MNA collections. She worked with
Native American artists to preserve their traditional crafts. During the
1950s she and her housemate photographed and recorded historic and pre-historic
spots along the Colorado River channel and side canyons. Her research on Glen
Canyon prior to the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam is a legacy This
collection is one of the few extant records of the archeological evidence
and stunning beauty of Glen Canyon.
She was a charter member of the Arizona Academy of Science, an organization
that stimulates scientific research and education and promotes fraternal
relationships among those engaged in scientific work. She was also a Fellow
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of
the American Anthropological Association and a Fellow of the Society of
American Archaeology. She was a charter member of the Arizona Association
of University Women and was listed in the 1959 edition of Who’s
Who of American Women. In 1984 she was named the first Fellow of the
Museum of Northern Arizona. In 1986 she was named a “Daughter of
the Desert,” a Smithsonian exhibit highlighting the work of early
women anthropologists in the Southwest. She received the prestigious Sharlot
Hall Award in 1991 for having made valuable contributions to the understanding
and awareness of Arizona and its history.
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