Bertha P. Dutton

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Bertha Pauline Dutton (March 29, 1903 – September 11, 1994) was an American archaeologist and ethnologist who studied the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. She was one of the first women archaeologists to work with the National Park Service.

Born in Algona, Iowa, she was the daughter of farmers Orrin Judd Dutton and Fannie B. Stewart. She enjoyed history, classical art, and literature in high school. She attended the Lincoln School of Commerce and the University of Nebraska from 1929 to 1931, working as a bank clerk and in other jobs.

After a car accident that required a long hospital stay, a visiting teacher suggested she study anthropology at the University of New Mexico, and she began there in 1932. She worked as secretary in the university’s Anthropology Department from 1933 to 1936. After graduation, the noted anthropologist Edgar Lee Hewett hired her at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe in 1936. While assisting Hewett, she convinced him to add ethnology exhibits to accompany archaeology exhibits, and he promoted her to curator of ethnology in 1939.

Dutton spent most of her career at the Museum of New Mexico. She was curator of ethnology from 1939 to 1959, curator of interpretive exhibits until 1962, and head of the Division of Research until her retirement in 1965. She also taught the museum’s television and adult education classes from 1947 to 1957 and remained a research associate with the museum until her death. She earned her PhD from Columbia University in 1952.

Her fieldwork included excavations at Chaco Canyon, in the Galisteo Basin, and in the Salinas area, as well as work in Mexico and Guatemala through a joint appointment with the School of American Research. To share anthropology with the public, she led 27 archaeology camps for Senior Girl Scouts between 1947 and 1957, teaching nearly 300 girls about Southwest anthropology.

After retiring from the Museum of New Mexico, Dutton became director of the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art (now Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian), a position she held for ten years. Bertha Dutton passed away in 1994 at the age of 91.