Clara Lee Tanner (née Clara Lee Fraps; May 28, 1905 – December 22, 1997)"Clara Lee Tanner (1905–1997) ." Arizona Women's Hall of Fame (www.azwhf.org). Retrieved 2016-05-28. was an American anthropologist, editor and art historian. She is known for studies of the arts and crafts of American Indians of the Southwest.Lytle-Webb, Jamie (1989). "Clara Lee Fraps Tanner." In: Ute Gacs, et al. (Eds.), Women Anthropologists: Selected Biographies. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. . pp. 350–354 .

Early life and education Born Clara Lee Fraps in Biscoe, North Carolina, the daughter of Joseph Conrad Fraps, a railroad machinist, and his wife, Clara Dargon Lee Fraps. She moved with her family to Tucson, Arizona, at the age of two.

She graduated from the University of Arizona with a double major in English and archaeology, in 1927, the first year that an archaeology major was offered. Her teacher in the latter field was Byron Cummings, who had steadily developed the department of archaeology at the university since his arrival in 1915.Thompson, Raymond H. (2005). "Anthropology at the University of Arizona, 1893–2005." Journal of the Southwest. Vol. 47, no. 3, p. 327–374 [329–331]. .

With Cummings's encouragement, she went on to graduate study, and, in 1928, became one of the university's first three recipients of master's degrees in archaeology, along with fellow students Florence May Hawley and Emil Walter Haury. In her master's thesis, initially entitled, "Hopiland" and ultimately submitted under the title "Archaeological Survey of Arizona,"Browman, David L. (2013). Cultural Negotiations: The Role of Women in the Founding of Americanist Archaeology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. . p. 113. Tanner undertook a survey of all known prehistoric habitations in the state.The thesis is available online from the digital repository of the University of Arizona. Manuscript materials related to the earlier version, "Hopiland," are found in the Clara Lee Fraps Tanner Papers (pdf), at the Arizona Historical Society.

Career Fraps (Tanner) received an appointment as a lecturer in the archaeology department at the University of Arizona for the fall semester 1928, and continued to teach there over the course of her career, becoming an assistant professor in 1935, associate professor in 1957, and full professor in 1968; she retired with the title of professor emerita in 1978."Clara L(ee) Tanner." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Retrieved via Biography in Context database 2016-05-29.Lytle-Webb (1989), p. 352.

She pursued further graduate work at the National University in Mexico City, in 1929, and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, in 1934.

In 1937, when Cummings retired and his former student, Emil Haury, took over as chair of the department, Haury initiated a change in its name to the Department of Anthropology, to reflect the breadth of scholarly activities it had come to encompass; he also aimed to expand it to include social anthropology, applied anthropology, and ethnology."History: Haury and the Department of Anthropology." University of Arizona, School of Anthropology. Retrieved 2016-05-29. Haury asked Tanner to develop a course on Southwest ethnology and archaeology. From around this time she began to focus her research on Southwest Indian arts, crafts, and ethnology.

In 1938, she married John Frederick Tanner, the proprietor of an Indian craft store in Tucson. Her involvement in her husband's work was another influence that shifted her research interests in the direction of regional cultural anthropology.

Tanner had regularly taken part in the university's summer excavation programs, and conducted archaeological and ethnological research at San Carlos and at the Tanque Verde ruins, a site of prehistoric dwellings. Later, in the interest of her research she traveled extensively throughout the Southwest; besides conducting archaeological studies she visited Native American craftspeople to observe them at work.

From 1938 to 1949 Tanner served as the editor of Kiva, the journal of the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society (affiliated with the Arizona State Museum), devoted to Southwestern archaeology, anthropology and history.

Clara and John Tanner had one child, a daughter, Sandra Lee (married: Elers), born in 1940. Out of concern for her family life, Tanner never completed a Ph.D., despite having accumulated additional graduate credits, and that lack may have slowed her promotion to full professor; Emil Haury, the department chair through the mid-1960s, regarded her as influential in the department, for having achieved "recognition through her writing".Lytle-Webb (1989), p. 352. Quotation from the author's interview with Haury. She was the author of some eight books and more than 100 articles published in scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers.

Reviewing her book Southwest Indian Craft Arts in 1969, archaeologist Neil Judd noted her expertise in the handicrafts of approximately two dozen ethnic groups of the region, and found that the book, with its meticulously accurate illustrations, successfully conveyed the changes in crafts over two generations.Judd, Neil M. (March 7, 1969). Review of Clara Lee Tanner, Southwest Indian Craft Arts (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968). Science. Vol. 163, Issue 3871, p. 1053. .

Publications Monographs

Southwest Indian Painting. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1957 Southwest Indian Craft Arts. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968 The James T. Bialac Collection of Southwest Indian Paintings. Tucson: Arizona State Museum, 1968 Southwest Indian Painting: A Changing Art. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973 Prehistoric Southwestern Craft Arts. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976 Apache Indian Baskets. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982 Indian Baskets of the Southwest. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1983

Co-Authored works

Tanner, Clara Lee, and John F. Tanner, "Contemporary Hopi crafts: Basketry, textiles, pottery, kachinas." In: Dorothy K. Washburn (Ed.), Hopi Kachina: Spirit of Life. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 1980. . pp. 65–85Lesure, Richard G. (2011). Interpreting Ancient Figurines: Context, Comparison, and Prehistoric Art. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. . p. 248 (bibliography).

Selected articles [as Clara Lee Fraps] "Tanque Verde ruins." Kiva 1(4): pp. 1–4. 1935Bostwick, Todd W. (2006). Byron Cummings: Dean of Southwest Archaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. . p. 316 (bibliography). "Life forms in prehistoric pottery of the Southwest." Kiva 8(4): pp. 26–32. 1942"Kiva". Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society (www.az-arch-and-hist.org). Included in list of "Twelve important Kiva articles of all time." Retrieved 2016-05-29. "Byron Cummings, 1860–1954." Kiva 20(1): pp. 1–20. 1954Thompson (2005), p. 372 (bibliography).

References

External links Guide to the Clara Lee Tanner Papers, at the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona