Who owns a region’s history? Join us as Journal of Arizona History author William Stoutamire shares the story of how many people in Flagstaff answered that very question in the early 1900s. By the late 1800s, many Hispanic and Anglo Americans in northern Arizona had begun “pothunting”--that is, playing amateur archaeologist and taking artifacts from Indigenous historic sites. Eventually, notable professional archaeologists from back east set their sights on northern Arizona, taking the region’s buried treasures back with them, often to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. To stop this flow of historic artifacts away from the region, local residents decided to open a museum in Flagstaff--the Museum of Northern Arizona--that could preserve, maintain, and display the artifacts found in the area. Join us as William Stoutamire unearths the story of how a treasured local institution in Flagstaff came to be.
You can read or download Stoutamire’s Journal of Arizona History article here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/859624.
After discussing the article, the audience will have a chance to ask our authors questions. Join us for another exciting “Ask the Author” program from the Arizona Historical Society.
Dr. William F. Stoutamire is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where he coordinates the public history minor and MA concentration in public history. He holds a BA in History from Florida State University and a PhD in History, with a focus in public history, from Arizona State University. As a doctoral student at ASU, Will worked on a series of projects for the National Park Service in Arizona, including a Historic Resource Study for the Flagstaff Area National Monuments. His recent article in the Journal of Arizona History builds off of this work. Will is currently working on his first book, tentatively titled Imagining Antiquity, which will offer a critical reexamination of the early history of the Antiquities Act.